!"#!$The Japan Association for Language Teaching
ISSN 0289-7938

tlt

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The Language Teacher

5Introduction

features
7

A Holistic Approach to Task-Based Course Design– Jane Willis

13Book Talk: Japan-Based Authors Discuss Their Craft– Marc Helgesen (with nine other Japan-based ELT authors)

19

Materials For Cultural Awareness: Combining Language,
Literature, and Culture in the Mind
– Brian Tomlinson

23

外国語で読解できないのは語学力のせい？―神経科学に基づいた読解教
授法と教材− 増原仁美29

Run It Past Rod: An Interview With Rod Ellis– Kent Hill

33

From Blueprint to Edifice: An Architectural Approach toCurriculum and Materials Design– Steven Gershon

37

インターネットを活用した日本語読解教材の作成方法―学習者個々のレベルやニーズに対応した教材作成− 北村達也、寺朱美、奥村学、川村よし子

my share41
42

Using Songs in Learner-Designed Materials – Brian Cullen
Which came first, L1 or L2? – Hatayama Hiroaki

departments
45
47
49
49
50
51
52
53
55
39

Book Reviews
Bulletin Board
Special Interest Group News
SIG Contact Information
Chapter Reports
Chapter Meetings
Chapter Contacts
Conference Calendar
Job Information Center/Positions
Advertiser Index

Volume 24, Number 2
February, 2000

2
JALT

Submissions
The editors welcome submissions of materials
concerned with all aspects of language teaching, particularly with relevance to Japan. All
English language copy must be typed, double
spaced, on A4-sized paper, with three
centimetre margins. Manuscripts should follow the American Psychological Association(APA) style as it appears in The Language Teacher.
The editors reserve the right to edit all copy for
length, style, and clarity, without prior notification to authors. Deadlines indicated below.
日本語記事の投稿要領：編集者は、外国語教育に関する、あらゆる話題の記事の投稿を歓迎します。原
稿は、なるべくA 4 版用紙を使用してください。ワー
プロ、原稿用紙への手書きに関わりなく、頁数を打ち、段落の最初は必ず１文字空け、１行2 7 字、横書きでお願いいたします。１頁の行数は、特に指定しませんが、行間はなるべく広めにおとりください。
The Language Teacher は、American Psychological Association (APA) のスタイルに従っています。
日本語記事の注・参考文献・引用などの書き方もこれに準じた形式でお願いします。ご不明の点は、T h e
Language Teacherのバックナンバーの日本語記事をご参照くださるか、日本語編集者にお問い合わせください。スペース等の都合でご希望に沿い兼ねる場合もありますので、ご了承ください。編集者は、編集の都合上、ご投稿いただいた記事の一部を、著者に無断で変更したり、削除したりすることがあります。

Feature Articles
English. Well written, well-documented articles of up to 3,000 words in English. Pages
should be numbered, new paragraphs indented, word count noted, and sub-headings(bold-faced or italics) used throughout forthe convenience of readers. Three copies are
required. The author’s name, affiliation, andcontact details should appear on only one of
the copies. An abstract of up to 150 words,
biographical information of up to 100 words,
and any photographs, tables, or drawings
should appear on separate sheets of paper.
Send all three copies to Malcolm Swanson.
日本語論文です。400字詰原稿用紙20枚以内。左寄
せで題名を記し、その下に右寄せで著者名、改行して右寄せで所属機関を明記してください。章、節に分け、太字または斜体字でそれぞれ見出しをつけてください。図表・写真は、本文の中には入れず、別紙にし、本文の挿入箇所に印を付けてください。フ
ロッピーをお送りいただく場合は、別文書でお願いいたします。英語のタイトル、著者・所属機関のローマ字表記、150ワード以内の英文要旨、100ワー
ド以内の著者の和文略歴を別紙にお書きください。
原本と原本のコピー２部、計３部を日本語編集者にお送りください。査読の後、採否を決定します。

Opinion & Perspectives. Pieces of up to 1,500
words must be informed and of current concern to professionals in the language teaching field. Send submissions to Bill Lee.
原稿用紙10〜15枚以内。現在話題となっている事
柄への意見、問題提起などを掲載するコラムです。
別紙に、英語のタイトル、著者・所属機関のローマ
字表記、英文要旨を記入し、日本語編集者にお送りください。締切は、掲載をご希望になる号の発行月の２カ月前の15日必着です。

Interviews. If you are interested in interviewing a well known professional in the field,
please consult the editor first.
「有名人」へのインタビュー記事です。インタ
ビューをされる前に日本語編集者にご相談ください。

Readers’ Views. Responses to articles orother items in TLT are invited. Submissionsof up to 500 words should be sent to theeditor by the 15th of the month, 3 months
February 2000

prior to publication, to allow time to request
a response to appear in the same issue, if
appropriate. TLT will not publish anonymous correspondence unless there is a compelling reason to do so, and then only if thecorrespondent is known to the editor.
The Language Teacher に掲載された記事などへの意見をお寄せください。長さは1 , 0 0 0 字以内、締切は、掲載をご希望になる号の発行月の3カ月前の15日に日本語編集者必着です。編集者が必要と判断した場合は、関係者に、それに対する反論の執筆を依頼
し、同じ号に両方の意見を掲載します。

Conference Reports. If you will be attending
an international or regional conference andare able to write a report of up to 1,500 words,
please contact the editor.
言語教育に関連する学会の国際大会等に参加する予定の方で、その報告を執筆したい方は、日本語編集者にご相談ください。長さは原稿用紙8枚程度です。

Departments
My Share. We invite up to 1,000 words on a
successful teaching technique or lesson plan
you have used. Readers should be able toreplicate your technique or lesson plan. Send
submissions to the “My Share” editor.
学習活動に関する実践的なアイディアの報告を載せるコラムです。教育現場で幅広く利用できるもの、進歩的な言語教育の原理を反映したものを優先的に採用します。絵なども入れることができますが、白黒で、著作権のないもの、または文書による掲載許可があるものをお願いします。別紙に、英語のタイ
トル、著者・所属機関のローマ字表記、200ワード程
度の英文要旨を記入し、My Share 編集者にお送りください。締切は、掲載をご希望になる号の発行月の２カ月前の15日必着です。

Book Reviews. We invite reviews of books
and other educational materials. We do not
publish unsolicited reviews. Contact the Publishers’ Review Copies Liaison for submission
guidelines and the Book Reviews editor for
permission to review unlisted materials.
書評です。原則として、その本の書かれている言
語で書くことになっています。書評を書かれる場合
は、Publishers Review Copies Liaison にご相談ください。また、重複を避け、T h e L a n g u a g e
Teacher に掲載するにふさわしい本であるかどうかを確認するため、事前に Book Review 編集者にお問い合わせください。

JALT News. All news pertaining to official
JALT organizational activities should be sent
to the JALT News editors. Deadline: 15th of themonth, 2 months prior to publication.
J A L T による催し物などのお知らせを掲載したい方は、JALT News 編集者にご相談ください。締切は、掲載をご希望になる号の発行月の2 カ月前の1 5 日にJALT News 編集者必着です。

Special Interest Group News. JALT-recognised
Special Interest Groups may submit a monthly
report to the Special Interest Group News
editor. Deadline: 15th of the month, 2 months
prior to publication.
JALT公認の Special Interest Group で、毎月のお知らせを掲載したい方は、SIGS 編集者にご相談く
ださい。締切は、掲載をご希望になる号の発行月の2カ月前の15日に sigs 編集者必着です。

Chapter Reports. Each Chapter may submit
a monthly report of up to 400 words whichshould (a) identify the chapter, (b) have atitle—usually the presentation title, (c) havea by-line with the presenter’s name, (d) include the month in which the presentation
was given, (e) conclude with the reporter’sname. For specific guidelines contact the
Chapter Reports editor. Deadline: 15th of themonth, 2 months prior to publication.
地方支部会の会合での発表の報告です。長さは原稿用紙2枚から４枚。原稿の冒頭に (a) 支部会名、(b) 発
表の題名、(c) 発表者名を明記し、(d) 発表がいつ行われたかが分かる表現を含めてください。また、(e) 文
末に報告執筆者名をお書きください。締切は、掲載をご希望になる号の発行月の2 カ月前の1 5 日に
Chapter Reports 編集者必着です。日本語の報告はChapter Reports日本語編集者にお送りください。

Chapter Meetings. Chapters must follow
the precise format used in every issue of TLT(i.e., topic, speaker, date, time, place, fee,and other information in order, followed bya brief, objective description of the event).
Maps of new locations can be printed upon
consultation with the column editor. Meetings that are scheduled for the first week ofthe month should be published in the previous month’s issue. Announcements or requests for guidelines should be sent to the
Chapter Meetings editor. Deadline: 15th ofthe month, 2 months prior to publication.
支部の会合のお知らせです。原稿の始めに支部名を明記し、発表の題名、発表者名、日時、場所、参加費、問い合わせ先の担当者名と電話番号・ファク
ス番号を箇条書きしてください。最後に、簡単な発表の内容、発表者の 介を付け加えても結構です。
地図を掲載したい方は、Chapter Announcements
編集者にご相談ください。第1 週に会合を予定する
場合は、前月号に掲載することになりますので、ご注意ください。締切は、掲載をご希望になる号の発行月の2カ月前の15日にChapter Announcements
編集者必着です。

Bulletin Board. Calls for papers, participation in/announcements of conferences, colloquia, seminars, or research projects may beposted in this column. E-mail or fax yourannouncements of up to 150 words to the
Bulletin Board editor. Deadline: 15th of themonth, 2 months prior to publication.
J A L T 以外の団体による催し物などのお知らせ、
J A L T 、あるいはそれ以外の団体による発表者、論文の募集を無料で掲載します。J A L T 以外の団体による催し物のお知らせには、参加費に関する情報を含めることはできません。The Language Teacher 及びJ A L T は、この欄の広告の内容を保証することはできません。お知らせの掲載は、一つの催しにつき一回、3 0 0 字以内とさせていただきます。締切は、掲載をご希望になる号の発行月の2 カ月前の1 5 日に
Bulletin Board 編集者必着です。その後、Conference Calendar 欄に、毎月、短いお知らせを載せることはできます。ご希望の際は、Conference Calendar 編集者にお申し出ください。

JIC/Positions. TLT encourages all prospective
employers to use this free service to locate themost qualified language teachers in Japan.
Contact the Job Information Center editor
for an announcement form. Deadline forsubmitting forms: 15th of the month twomonths prior to publication. Publication does
not indicate endorsement of the institution
by JALT. It is the position of the JALT Executive
Board that no positions-wanted announcements will be printed.
求人欄です。掲載したい方は、Job Information
Center/Positions 編集者にAnnouncement Formを請求してください。締切は、掲載をご希望になる号の発行月の2カ月前の15日に Job Information
Center/Positions 編集者必着です。 The Language
Teacher 及び JALTは、この欄の広告の内容を保証することはできません。なお、求職広告不掲載が JALT
Executive Board の方針です。

1

2

The Language Teacher 24:2

The Language Teacher
JALT Publications Board Chair — William Acton
Nagaikegami 6410-1, Hirako-cho, Owariasahi-shi,
Aichi-ken 488-0872; i44993g@nucc.cc.nagoya-u.ac.jp
Immediate Past Editor — Laura MacGregorIrimacho, 3-133-307, Chofu-shi 182-0004; laura@tokyo.email.ne.jp
Co-Editor — Bill Lee
Faculty of Regional Studies, Gifu University, 1-1
Yanagido, Gifu 501-1193; f: 058-293-3118;
wmlee@cc.gifu-u.ac.jp
Co-Editor — Malcolm Swanson
5-6-8 Maigaoka, Kokura Minami-ku, Kitakyushu 8020823; t/f: 093-962-8430 (h); malcolm@seafolk.ne.jp
Japanese-Language Editor — 衣川隆生 (Kinugawa Takao)〒305-8577 つくば市天王台1-1-1 筑波大学留学生センタ−;

t/f: 0298-53-7477 (w); kinugawa@intersc.tsukuba.ac.jp
Japanese-Language Associate Editor — 小野正樹 (Ono
Masaki)〒305-8577 つくば市天王台1-1-1 筑波大学日本語・日本文化学
類;

t/f: 0298-53-7372 (w); ono@sakura.cc.tsukuba.ac.jp
Assistant Editor — Paul Lewis
602 New Urban Issha, 2-34 Issha, Meito-ku,
Nagoya 463-0093; t/f: 052-709-1307 (h);pndl@gol.com
TLT Online Editor — Bob Gettings
Hokusei Gakuen Women’s Junior College, Minami-4
Nishi-17, Chuo-ku, Sapporo 064-0804; t: 011-6132488 (h); t: 011-561-7156 (w); f: 011-513-7505 (w);gettings@sco.bekkoame.ne.jp
Column Editors
A Chapter in Your Life — Joyce Cunningham& Miyao MarikoJoyce Cunningham: Faculty of
Humanities, Ibaraki University, 2-1-1 Bunkyo, Mito
310-0056; t: 029-228-8455;
f: 029-228-8499; English:
doycie@mito.ipc.ibaraki.ac.jp; 日本語:
mariko@cs.kasei.ac.jp
My Share — Sandra J. Smith & Oishi Harumi
Sandra J. Smith: Suzugamine Women’s College, 4-618 Inokuchi, Nishi-ku, Hiroshima 733-8623; t: 082278-1103 (w); f: 082-277-0301 (w);English: smith@suzugamine.ac.jp;
日本語: oishi@nagoya-wu.ac.jp
Book Reviews — Katharine Isbell & Oda Masaki
Send all column submissions to Katharine Isbell:
Miyazaki International College, 1405 Kano, Kiyotakecho, Miyazaki-gun 889-1605; t: 0985-85-5931 (w);
f: 0985-84-3396 (w); kisbell@miyazaki-mic.ac.jp;
日本語: oda@lit.tamagawa.ac.jp
Publishers’ Review Copies Liaison — Angela Ota
West Park Communication Services, Funakoshi 957-6,
Gosen-shi, Niigata 959-1805; t: 0250-41-1104; f: 025041-1226; angela@cocoa.ocn.ne.jp

日本語: nagano97@pop.wa2.so-net.or.jp;

English: dmp@gol.com
Chapter Meetings — Tom Merner
1-55-17 Higiriyama, Konan-ku, Yokohama 233-0015;
t/f: 045-822-6623 (w); tmt@nn.iij4u.or.jp
JALT News — Thom Simmons & Sugino Toshiko

Thom Simmons: #303 Tanaka Bldg., 2-28-10
Morigaoka, Isogo-ku, Yokohama 235-0024;
t/f: 045-845-8242; malang@gol.com;
Sugino Toshiko: RXE21345@nifty.ne.jp
Bulletin Board — David Dycus & Saito Makiko
David Dycus: 3-57 Toriimatsu-cho, Kasugai 486-0844;
English: dcdycus@japan-net.ne.jp;
日本語: chip621@aol.com
Conference Calendar — Lynne Roecklein
Lynne Roecklein: Faculty of Regional Studies, Gifu
University, 1-1 Yanagido, Gifu 501-1193; t: 058-2933096 (w); f: 058-293-3118 (w); lynne@cc.gifu-u.ac.jp
Job Information Center/Positions — Bettina Begole
436 Kuwabara, Aoya-cho, Ketaka-gun, Tottori 6890529; begole@po.harenet.ne.jp
Occasional Column Editors
Educational Innovations/Creative Course Design —Daniel J. McIntyre, Shuwa Residence #702,
4-11-7 Nishi-Azabu, Minato-ku, Tokyo 106-0031
The Region — David McMurray, Fukui Prefectural
University, Kenjojima 38-7, 4-1-1 Matsuoka-cho,
Yoshida-gun, Fukui-ken 910-1142; t/f: 0776-61-4203(h); mcmurray@fpu.ac.jp
Net Nuggets — Larry Davies, Nanzan University;
davies@ic.nanzan-u.ac.jp
Working Papers — Joseph Tomei, Kumamoto Gakuen
University, Faculty of Foreign Languages, Oe 2-chome
5-1, Kumamoto 862-8680; t: 096-364-5161 (ext. 1410)(w) ; f: 096-372-0702 (w); jtomei@kumagaku.ac.jp
Editorial Advisory Board
Torkil Christensen (Hokusei Women’s Junior College); Steve
Cornwell (Osaka Jogakuin Junior College); Kathleen S. Foley(Aoyama Gakuin Women’s Junior College); Michael Furmanovsky(Ryukoku University); Dale Griffee (Seigakuin University); Ron
Grove (Mejiro University); Wayne Johnson (Ryukoku University);
Steve McGuire (Nagoya University of Arts); Laura MacGregor(Sophia University); Daniel J. McIntyre (Tokyo University);
Miyanaga Chieko (Kyoto Tachibana Women’s University); Tim
Murphey (Nanzan University); Jill Robbins (Doshisha Women’sCollege); Lynne Roecklein (Gifu University); Sakui Keiko (Kwansei
Gakuin University); Shiozawa Mayumi (Ashiya Women’s Jr.
College); Craig Sower (Shujitsu Women’s University); Tamara
Swenson (Osaka Jogakuin Junior College); Takahashi Sachiko(Okayama Notre Dame Seishin Women’s University); Gene van
Troyer (Gifu University of Education)
和文要旨作成協力者 — 阿部恵美佳 (Japanese abstracts — Abe

Emika)SIG Reports — Robert Longt: 093-833-5022; f: 093-884-3400 (w);long@dhs.kyutech.ac.jp

Production:
Proofreaders — Brian Cullen, Scott Gardner, Aleda
Krause, Beverley Elsom Lafaye, Robert Long, Amy Peyton,
Steven Snyder, Kinugawa Takao, Ono Masaki, Tsukahara
Maki
Design & Layout — The Word Works
t: 045-314-9324; f: 045-316-4409; tww@gol.com
Printing — Koshinsha Co., Ltd., Osaka

Chapter Reports — Diane Pelyk & Nagano Yoshiko
Diane Pelyk: Fukumaru Bldg. 10B, 4-2-30 Masaki
Naka-ku, Nagoya 460-0024; t/f: 052-671-8232

JALT Central Office — Urban Edge Bldg. 5F, 1-37-9 Taito,
Taito-ku, Tokyo 110-0016; t: 03-3837-1630;
f: 03-3837-1631; jalt@gol.com

Letters — Bill Lee (See Editor) & Koarai Mikiya
小荒井幹也: t/f: 011-614-5753 (h);ja8m-kari@asahi-net.or.jp

February 2000

TLT Online: langue.hyper.chubu.ac.jp/jalt/pub/tlt

3

4

The Language Teacher 24:2

Introduction
To determine the focus of this materials special issue, we editors concurred that theory-based papers should takeprecedence over ones exemplifying materials. We were fortunate to receive contributions spanning a wide
range of theoretical issues in materials development. Jane Willis opens this special issue with a task-based
holistic approach to materials development which stresses the use of a pedagogic corpus. Marc Helgeson,collaborating with nine other Japan-based ELT authors, offers the straight-up lowdown on publishing materials
internationally for use in this country. Shifting the medium to literature, Brian Tomlinson follows with anexperiential method to stimulate cultural awareness. Using a neuro-scientific basis, our first Japanesecontributor, Masuhara Hitomi, reevaluates reading in L2 and suggests that it need not be such a slow andlaborious activity. The next feature is an interview with materials developer and applied linguist, Rod Ellis, whofills us in on his latest materials development projects and answers some theoretical questions from Kent Hill.
Whether to use professionally developed materials or create them in-house is a consideration for many
university English programs. Steve Gershon extends a metaphor to illustrate why and how his university
chooses to develop materials in-house and to illustrate the process. Our final paper comes from Japanese
authors, Kitamura Tatsuya, Tera Akemi, Okumura Manabu, and Kawamura Yoshiko, who describe a method
for making Japanese reading materials using the Internet.
We thank everyone who helped to contribute to this issue. It has been a labor of love and we sincerely hope
it bears fruit by motivating readers to get more involved in materials development, an area of language teaching
still striving to reach its full potential.
Guest Editors: Kent Hill, James Swan, and Hagino Hiroko

Contributors’ Biodata and Contact Info
After teaching English and teacher training in West
Africa, Cyprus, Scotland, Iran, Singapore, and the Far
East for nearly twenty years, Jane Willis now works at
Aston University on their new modular Masters in
TESOL/TESP by Distance Learning. She specialises insyllabus design, task-based learning, and lexical
chunks. Her recent books include Challenge and Change
in Language Teaching (with Dave Willis), and A Framework for Task-based Learning. She enjoys not only
watching films, sailing, skiing and mountain walking, but also observing her grandchildren learning totalk and socialise. t: 0044 121 359 3611; f:0044 121
359 2725; j.r.willis@aston.ac.uk
Marc Helgesen is a Professor at Miyagi Gakuin
Women’s College, Sendai and has been active in JALT
and in publishing for 18 years. He is an author ofEnglish Firsthand, Active Listening, Workplace English,
and the Impact series and has been a featured speakerat JALT, Korea TESOL, and Thai TESOL. Despite extensive writing experience, he is still lousy at spellingand proofreading.

Rod Bolitho), Openings, Use Your English (withMasuhara Hitomi), and Materials Development in Language Teaching.
Department of English Language and Literature
Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
National University of Singapore
Block AS5
7 Arts Link
Singapore 117570.
f: (65)-773-2981; ellbjt@leonis.nus.edu.sg
Steven Gershon received his MA in Applied Linguistics from Reading University (UK) and has taught in
the US, Britain, France, and China. He has beenteaching in Japan for 13 years and is currently an
Associate Professor at Obirin University and Director
of Obirin’s English Language Program. He is the coauthor of the listening course Sound Bytes and thecourse book series OnLine. t/f: 045-439-5686;
sgershon@obirin.ac.jp

Brian Tomlinson is a Senior Fellow at the National
University of Singapore, and the Founder and President of MATSDA. He has worked as a teacher trainer,
curriculum developer and university lecturer in Indonesia, Japan (at Kobe University), Nigeria, UK,
Vanuatu, and Zambia, and has published numerous
articles and books, including Discover English (withFebruary 2000

5

6

The Language Teacher 24:2

A Holistic Approach to Task-Based
Jane Willis
Course Design

Aston University, UK

After outlining three basic principles relating to language learning, I then describe and illustrate a holistic
process of course and materials design which takesthese principles into account.
1 Three principles for materials designers
Principle 1: Language is a meaning system.
Halliday (1973) emphasises that learning a second language involves the acquisition of a new system forrealising familiar meanings. In natural SLA circumstances, we begin by wanting to mean, (and understandwhat others mean) and then go on to seek or notice
wordings that express those meanings. Language does
not exist in a vacuum, and it does not develop in a
vacuum. This is why in classroom circumstances lists
of words and sample patterns taught as single items
very rarely become part of the learners’ deployablesystem. Language develops in response to the need tomean and to understand what others mean (Halliday,
1973; Willis & Willis, forthcoming). It follows thatmaterials we offer learners should allow them to focus
first on meanings in contexts and then go on to lookat the wordings that realise the meanings.
From this, we can argue that any pedagogical process which supports natural acquisitional processes
should therefore lead from meanings to wordings.
This is a major principle behind a task-based approach to course design. In setting learners a task toachieve (e.g., a problem to solve), the emphasis is firston learners’ exchanging meanings to complete thetask, using whatever language they can recall. Thenthey examine the language that fluent speakers or
writers used to do the same task and focus on typicalwords, phrases and patterns (i.e., wordings) that occurred (Willis, 1996b, 1998a, 1999).
Principle 2. Exposure to the target language in use is vital.
To acquire a new language system, learners need
exposure to the kinds of language that they will need
(Krashen, 1987). It follows, then, that whatever learners hear and read as part of their course needs to reflect,as far as is possible, the typical features of the languageof the learners’ target discourse communities.
For example, if learners need to understand spontaneous informal interaction in English, they must be

exposed to typical samples of spontaneous talk. Iflearners of business English need to be able to respond to letters of complaint, they need to have readand studied the language of typical responses toletters of complaint.
If learners don’t know why they are learning English, they need exposure to a broad and varied selection of materials that will encourage them to go on
using their English and learning outside class on theirown and to gain a solid foundation they can build on,
once they discover what their language needs will be.
In all cases, the choice of language data, both recordings of spoken language and written texts, is of vitalpedagogical importance. Course designers should aim
to choose a representative set of target text types fromaccessible real life sources—samples that reflect the
typical language features of genres from the learners’
present or future discourse communities. This is amajor principle behind corpus-based approaches tolanguage syllabus design and data-driven learning.
Principle 3. Some focus on language form is desirable.
Although many people acquire a new language withno formal tuition (through exposure to the target
language and opportunities to use it to express theirown meanings), there is now some evidence thatlearners do better if, at some point, their attention isdrawn to typical features of language form (Skehan,1994). This can be done in two ways:••

Through consciousness-raising exercises highlighting frequently used language items, to help learners perceive patterns (Long, 1988; Schmidt, 1990),
and systematise what they know.
By challenging learners to communicate in circumstances where accuracy matters (e.g. making apublic presentation of their ideas or findings), sothey feel the need, at a prior planning stage, toorganise their ideas clearly and to check that theirlexical choices, their grammar and pronunciation
are accurate. (A similar need for a prestige variety
was identified in research by Labov, 1970.) The
cycle of Task -> Planning -> Report, which forms
the central part of a TBL framework, caters to this(Willis, 1996a, 1998a).

教材開発者にとって大切なこととして、( 1 ) 言語は意味のあるシステムとして見られなければならない。言語を効果的に習得するためには学
習者は、文脈の中の意味に注目し、そして次に語彙や文法のパターンなどの言葉遣いに注意する、( 2 ) 学習者は目標言語社会で実際に使われている典型的な言語にたくさん接する必要がある、( 3 ) これに加えて、学習者が言語表現形式に注目をすれば、より上達する、という3 点を挙げる。コースデザインの全体的なアプローチはまず適切な話題を見つけ、次にたくさんのテキストと録音したものを集めることである。
そして、言語使用を促進させるタスクがデザインされ、流暢な話し手によって演じられ、録音される。十分なテキストや録音したものは教育コーパスの一部として選択されるのである。このデータを言語的に分析することによって教材開発者は学習者の意識を高めるタスクで強調するための適切な言語特徴を見つけることができる。このデザインのプロセスがサンプルタスクとアクティビティとともに例示されている。
February 2000

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Feature: Willis
2 From principles to practice
We have said that to acquire the target language
effectively, learners need to engage actively in processing the meanings of whatever they hear and read. A
variety of communication tasks can be designed which
will motivate and give learners a purpose for doing
this. These tasks should also give learners practice inthe skills they will need, for example, reading a text
quickly to extract specific information, taking part inspontaneous spoken interaction, or giving plannedoral or written presentations. Subsequent exercises
can then be devised which draw attention to thelanguage of the texts and recordings, to the words,
phrases, and patterns typical of that genre or topic.
Thus, materials designers have three distinct responsibilities: (a) providing appropriate language data
for the course, (b) designing meaning-focused communication tasks arising out of those data that engage learners in meaning and that encourage genuine
use of language, (c) designing form-focused language
study exercises that raise learners’ awareness of typical and useful formal features of language.
3 A holistic approach
3.1 Initial stages: gathering a pedagogical corpus
A holistic approach to course and materials designmeans that you begin by assembling a set of language
data on topics of interest to your learners: e.g., written
texts and recorded spoken extracts, roughly sufficient
to form the basis for your course. This forms the raw
material for your pedagogic corpus (Willis & Willis,
1996:67), which may later be refined. You then organiseand sequence this material into pedagogical units,
keeping notes of any gaps or imbalance of material.
The next step is to analyse this provisional corpus to
identify language features that your learners would
benefit from studying, and to check coverage of otheruseful features.
This process so far can be summarised thus:
Figure 1
Assemblelanguagedata-> sequence -> analyse ->Identify useful(texts + language
features, recordings),
check coverage

Examples for three different courses follow.
For a general course, the pedagogic corpus might
consist of authentic written texts on suitable topics
from a variety of sources and recordings of natural
speech—both planned talk and spontaneous interaction—with transcriptions. Sources of written data could
include text books, resource books, magazines or newspapers and for spoken data, extracts from the BBC
World Service (with permission), recordings of interviews, or communication tasks on specified topics
carried out by fluent speakers of the target language.
8

For an ESP course for medical students, you mightuse extracts from introductory medical texts books,
from popular WWW sites, for example medical noticeboards, from popular magazines which have a doctor’s
advice column, or extracts from radio programmeswith medical themes. In Japan, you might interview
doctors who commonly treat the expatriate community, with a view to obtaining a series of two-minuteinterviews, each covering a different medical topic.
For more advanced students, you might use academic
research articles, specialist medical journals, and recordings of mini-lectures.
In addition to appropriate story books and othertexts written for children, your data for a Young
Learners course could include transcripts of typicalprimary school activities, such as children at play in
English and stories told to audiences of children.
Whether your course is ESP, EAP, or of a moregeneral nature, you would obviously need to take into
account length, complexity, and conceptual and cultural accessibility of the text or recording.
At the end of this initial design process, it is important to check that you have a good variety of text types
and interactions and to identify any gaps. For example, you might find you have sufficient written
texts but too few spontaneous spoken interactions
with transcripts. The next step is to refine this corpus.
3.2 Task design and making recordings
For each topic or text, you can design tasks that yourlearners would find engaging to do themselves andthat would generate the type of interaction they may
need to take part in. Vary the types of task to offerdifferent degrees of cognitive challenge. Tasks canengage learners in listing, classifying, matching, comparing, problem-solving, sharing experiences, andanecdote telling. Some can have more creative goals,
such as writing a story or designing a brochure (seeWillis, 1996a: 149-154; Willis, 1999).
Task instructions can then be adapted to provide
opportunities for practice of the different skills yourlearners need: e.g., beginning with spontaneous exploratory interaction or writing individual notes orreading a text prior to doing the task, and thenplanning an oral (or written) public presentation of
the task outcome. Different interaction patterns canbe stimulated by having learners work as a team (withor without individual roles), in pairs, or as individuals.
Make recordings of fluent speakers doing these tasks(set a time limit of 1, 2 or 3 minutes) and transcribe thetasks that worked well (see Willis, 1996a: 87-98 foradvice). You could also record short interviews withfluent speakers on one aspect of the topic of the unit.
The transcriptions of the tasks and interviews canthen be added to the pedagogic corpus, to increase
the amount of spoken data available for the course
and to facilitate the study of typical features of spontaneous interaction. You should by now have a wellThe Language Teacher 24:2

Feature: Willis
balanced collection of texts and transcripts: Your
pedagogic corpus is now ready for the next stage ofcourse design.
3.3 Organising the material
You will now need to sequence these raw materials
into suitable pedagogical units, taking into accountlocal constraints such as length of course and learners’
willingness to read, prepare, or write up outside classhours. For example, each unit might contain one or
two texts and recordings on a common theme.
Each unit will also need language-focused activities tofollow the task cycles. But before these can be produced,
it is better to gain an overall picture of the linguistic
content of your pedagogic corpus, so that you can shareout linguistic features in a balanced way among units,with free space in some units for recycling.
3.4 Two tips•

At this stage, keep back a few parallel texts and task
or interview transcripts to use for class tests.

•

Learners can often help in the design process bysuggesting topics, supplying texts, recording interviews, and identifying skills they may need.

I mean? and vague language chunks, e.g., and that kindof thing are ubiquitous; they could be collected fromearly units and focused on in a later unit where severalof them occur together in the spoken data.
With no computer, you can do a simple text-by-text
analysis by hand, using published frequency lists to
help you identify common words and notice usefulcollocations, chunks, and patterns that occur withthem. Willis (1996a: 171-172) gives lists of the top 200
words (spoken and written separately).
You can also look out for patterns in discourse andhow these are signalled and different ways of expressing particular meanings, notions and functions. These
are only identifiable by hand.
The linguistic features thus identified can become
the focus of language study exercises and shared out
among the units.
4.2 Designing language study materials
This is the final stage in TBL course design. Language
study exercises will be based largely on examples
occurring in the data, occasionally supplemented withdictionary examples. Materials can range from traditional practice exercises to learner-centred, consciousness-raising activities, which involve different kindsof operations, including identifying patterns or usages, classifying, hypothesis building and checking,cross-language exploration, deconstruction and reconstruction of text, recall, and reference activities(Willis & Willis, 1996: 63-76).

4 Preparation of language-focused activities
4.1 Identifying useful language features
The next step is to carry out a linguistic analysis of thepedagogic corpus, to identify the most frequent andtypical language features which will be of most use to
your learners.
There are two ways of doing this—either by com5 Summary and example
puter or by hand.
We can now add to our first figure to show the process
If all your texts and transcripts can be typed orin more detail.
scanned into a computer, and if you have some conAs an example of this process, let us take the topic ofcordance software (listed in references), you will be
Conversation And Cultural Norms for learners who wantable to get a list of words in frequency order and a list
conversational English.
of the top X number of words in alphabetical order;
Text selection: for an advanced class, a short extract
you can also call up concordances of key words sorted
from a book giving advice to business people socialisingalphabetically to the right and to the left, which willwith their Japanese counterparts for the first time.
enable you to identify frequently-occurring word comFor a lower level class, a recorded anecdote aboutbinations—i.e., lexical chunks. For more ideas on this,
how a British couple in England felt very embarrassed
see Tribble & Jones (1990) or Barnbrook (1996).
when an eminent Japanese professor, on arrival at
A programme like Wordsmith Tools, created by Mike
their house for dinner, asked them how much they
Scott (University of Liverpool, OUP) will give you (andhad paid for their house.
your learners) the chance to build
lists of the most common 2-, 3, or 4-word (or more) chunks.
Notice in which texts and in
Figure 2
which units these occur. It may
be that your data will yield
Selection of topics.
-> sequence into units -> analyse-> Identify useful language
Assemble texts &features, allot to units,
enough examples to allow you
recorded data,
design language focus
to focus on common timecheck coverage,
activities.
phrases or phrases of location or
identify gaps.
quantity in early units, as these
Design tasks.
are naturally so plentiful. Some
Supplement withrecordings ofphrases are topic-specific and cantasks & interviews.
be highlighted together. InterFinal selection of data.
actional phrases, e.g., Know what
February 2000

9

10The Language Teacher 24:2

Feature: Willis
We needed some spontaneous interaction, so weplanned a two-minute task: “What don’t you talkabout in your culture? Make a list of things you would
avoid asking about and say why.” We recorded two
British people doing this and transcribed the first halfof their discussion.
To provide a written text parallel to the spoken
interaction, we asked a fluent English-speaking Japanese woman to write some advice for visitors to Japan—in response to the same task instructions.
We sequenced these within the unit, using the spoken anecdote at pre-task stage to introduce the topic.
The learners would then do the task themselves in pairs
and report their list and reasons to the whole class.
As a second task, they would read the written advice
and compare this with the content of their own lists.
For homework, they could be encouraged to revise
their lists and reasons, and record themselves giving
advice as if to an English person.
So far, the emphasis has been primarily on exchanging meanings. There is also a focus on accuracy, whicharises naturally when learners are asked to report theirlist to the whole class and later, when recording theiradvice, as both these lead up to public “performances.”
A more specific focus on form is introduced in thesubsequent Language Focus activities. The instructions for one activity were:•Identify, from the transcript and the written text,
two or three ways of introducing advice on cultural
matters.

The examples in the spoken transcript were:“You don’t normally go and ask people personalquestions, do you?”“Like, I wouldn’t ask you how much you paid foryour sweater or what have you.”“The other day somebody said that English people
don’t like talking about religion, money, sex, . . . er
. . . politics—what was the other one?”
The teacher here could point out that when giving
advice, reporting what other people have said or donein the past is very typical in social interaction in
Britain. Written examples included“Avoid talking about politics and religion.”“Avoid starting discussions or arguments.”“It’s rude to cut into someone’s talk. If you have tointerrupt someone, it’s better to start by saying
something like ‘I’m sorry to interrupt but . . .’”The teacher here could point out these patterns and ask
learners to find more examples of each.Other consciousness-raising activities could include the following:••

Find, in the spoken transcript, eight phrases containing the wordI and try to classify them according to their function in the interaction.
Find seven phrases containing words ending in -ly.
Write down any five phrases but miss out the -ly

February 2000•

words. See if your partner can read your phrases out
loud putting back the right -ly word. E.g., That’s
funny because the other day... (the word actually is
missing).
Find, in the written text, phrases with one verb
followed by another verb in +ing, e.g., ..it’s better tostop talking. Can you find in the text five different
verbs which come before a verb ending in -ing? Can
you think of two more?

These activities illustrate three of the consciousnessraising activity types listed in 4.2 above. Can you
identify which? (This is a classifying task!)
7 Conclusion
Some approaches to materials design begin with listsof specific language forms and skills, and then try tofind (or concoct) texts and tasks which illustrate theiruse. These I would call additive in approach, as theylead from wordings to meanings.
This paper has described a holistic course design
process which begins with whole texts and activities
that involve processing meanings in contexts, andwhich then leads on to a focus on wordings and form.
Basing materials on a well-selected pedagogic corpus means that recycling of common and typicallanguage features will happen naturally inside theclassroom, and that learners will be far better prepared
for whatever English they meet and need to use
outside the classroom.
References
Barnbrook, G. (1996). Language and computers: A practical
introduction to a computational analysis of language.
Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh.
Halliday, M. (1975). Learning how to mean. London: Edward
Arnold.
Krashen, S. D. (1985). Principles and practice in second language acquisition. Oxford: Pergamon.
Labov, W. (1970). The study of language in its social context. In P. Giglioli (Ed.), Language and social context.
Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Long, M. (1988). Instructed interlanguage development. In
L. Beebe (Ed.), Issues in second language acquisition: Multiple
perspectives. Rowley, Mass: Newbury House.
Schmidt, R. (1990). The role of consciousness in second
language learning. Applied Linguistics 11, 2(129-158).
Scott, M. (1998). Wordsmith tools (concordance software)available only through OUP’s Internet site: http://
www.oup.co.uk/elt
Skehan, P. (1994). Interlanguage development and taskbased learning. In M. Bygate, A. Tonkyn, & E. Williams(Eds.), Grammar and the language teacher (pp.175-199).
Hemel Hempstead: Prentice Hall.
Tribble, C. & Jones, G. (1990). Concordancing in the Classroom. Harlow: Longman.
Willis, D. & Willis, J. (forthcoming). Six propositions insearch of a methodology: Applying linguistics to taskbased learning. In I. de la Cruz, C. Santamaria, C. Tejedor,& C. Valero (Eds.), Estudios de lingüística aplicada a finales
de siglo. Alcala: Universidad de Alcalá.
Willis, cont’d on p. 27.
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12

The Language Teacher 24:2

Book Talk: Japan-Based Authors
Discuss Their Craft
Marc Helgesen(with nine other Japan-based ELT authors)
Miyagi Gakuin Women’s College
Each fall, dozens of new texts are launched in Japan tothe bells and whistles of extensive promotion campaigns. Some become long term hits. Others have arespectable life of a few years with decent sales. Others
soar first season, only to die the second year onceteachers discover that, despite the pretty pictures, theyhate the book. And, of course, some newly launchedbooks never fly at all.
The question is “Why?” What makes a book work inJapan? Clearly there is a complex mix of authoring,
design, editorial input and promotion—not to mention timing and luck. When approached by the editorsof this special issue about an article on writing forJapan, I thought it would be a great opportunity toreflect and share ideas. The problem, however, is that
there are few “rules” and no “formulae” for writing
ELT textbooks. (Not entirely true: many textbooks are
written to a formula; if you’re teaching one, you havemy sympathy.) As Prowse (1998) points out, most ELT
writers employ their own intuitions, writing textbooks much as they might write fiction, albeit in theservice of a syllabus. So, were I to write my version of
how writing for Japan works, it would simply be “TheGospel according to Marc” rather than truths generalizable for your own teaching and writing. Instead, thisarticle follows a format used by Prowse in Tomlinson’s(1998) Materials Development in Language Teaching, abook I highly recommend.
What advice would other Japan-based authors give?
What opinions do we share? How do we incorporate
our views and experiences into our books? To see if
there was consensus, I sent questions to several authors. A sampling of their responses follows.
Just how different is Japan?
A travel writer supposedly suggested that “Japan is
the most foreign country in the world.” Teachers
living and working here often hear about Japaneseuniqueness. Interestingly, while everyone recognized
the importance of making books appropriate for thetarget audience (culture, age, interest, classroom realities, etc.), most questioned the idea that Japan is
totally different:“I think there’s a certain amount of myth-making
involved in this statement. We do a disservice tolearners here by perpetuating the myth of difference.”“Judging from reactions from audiences at workshops in other countries, EFL needs seem to be similar
in at least Taiwan, Korea, and Thailand. I think theirneeds for interactive texts are the same as Japan’s. Sales
show good results in Latin American countries, too, I
understand.”“I don’t think writing for Japan is so different. Of
course every regional/national/cultural/institutional
context is unique. However, one way the markets are
similar has to do with general educational and/or language learning traditions (teacher centered, grammartranslation background, rigid exam-based curriculum,
bias toward memorization, certain accepted language
learning strategies, text focused learning, etc.).”Most other countries mentioned are Asian, where weshare both traditions of hierarchical educational structures (it’s no accident that 先生, sensei, could literally berendered as “born before”) and practical considerations
such as large classes and exam-focused learning. Of
course, the culture of each country differs and authors
need to balance references to countries—in the same
way that one counts male and female characters toensure they are equally represented. Awareness of cultural norms is also essential. In Thailand, for example,
the Thai royal family is so respected that any negativereference to any royal family is considered very badtaste. (Would-be authors, don’t worry that you don’tknow these bits of information yet. Your publisher will
have your manuscript reviewed in potential markets
and “cultural mistakes” will come out then.)
The usefulness of material in other markets doesn’t
imply that the teaching situations are the same. A
coursebook that is used over a year in Japan maybe becovered in one term in Taiwan, where classes often
meet more frequently. The same book may last only amonth or two in Korean language institutes (similar toconversation schools) where classes meet daily. The
students’ focus can also be different:“Students here spend only the time actually in class on
English and do very little outside of class. The majority
just squeak by with minimal English ability even after
years of so-called study of English. The learning curve
here is a very gradual incline. To write for Japan is towrite for the gentle incline. Most of the rest of the world
seems to follow a much steeper curve, increasing rate as
the student’s language ability progresses.”

日本でテキストを執筆するのに関連した問題について1 0 人の筆者からの意見を要約する。日本市場と他市場の類似点と相違点、テキストを執筆する方法、出版業界の変化、これから執筆する人への助言などを述べる。

February 2000

13

Feature: Helgesen
Thanks and Acknowledgments toContributors
Everyone invited to contribute to this article lives inJapan and has had at least two successful books or series
published. Some of the authors involved write primarily
for the adult market, some mainly for children and two
write for both. I tried to invite authors for all majorinternational publishers active in Japan.
To keep the article focused, however, I didn’t contact
people who write exclusively for Japanese publishers.
While an important market segment, it is a very different kind of publishing. As one of the participating
authors (who writes for both types of publishers) pointed
out: “Editors’ work is very different between ELT
publishers and those Japanese publishers. You’re much
more of a team member in ELT publishing but tend to
be treated as BIG sensei at Japanese publishers. I’m notsaying which is better. It’s just different.”
These are the authors who were able to contribute tothis article, listed in the order of response (publishingrewards speed). For reasons of space, I did not list coauthors or full bibliographies. The participating authors
wrote far more than could be included here. If you’d liketo read the entire text (and know who authored eachquotation), visit the JALT Material Writers SIG website:
http://www2.gol.com/users/bobkeim/mw/
mwcontents.html
The document is entitled “ELT author—raw material” and can be found at
http://www2.gol.com/users/bobkeim/mwcontents/tltsp/
helg.html—Marc Helgeson
Steven Gershon, OnLine series (Macmillan
Heinemann), Sound Bytes series (Prentice Hall
[Pearson]).
Dale Fuller, Face to Face, Airwaves (Macmillian
LanguageHouse).
Toyama Setsuko, Journeys Listening/Speaking 1,
SuperKids series, Development Editor (PrenticeHall [Pearson Education]).
David Harrington, Speaking of Speech (Macmillian
LanguageHouse), Street Talk (Calson Books).
Aleda Krause, SuperKids and Supertots series (PrenticeHall Asia [Pearson]).
Roger Barnard, Fifty-Fifty series (Prentice Hall
[Pearson]), Good News, Bad News (Oxford University Press).
Chuck Sandy, Passages series, Interchange video (Cambridge University Press).
David Paul, Finding Out, Communicate (Macmillan/
Heinemann).
Nakata Ritsuko, Let’s Go series (Oxford University
Press), Koushite Oshieru Kodomono Eigo (Apricot).
Marc Helgesen, English Firsthand series (Longman[Pearson]), Active Listening (Cambridge University Press).

14

Authors of children’s books were very specific about
differences in the teaching situations.
“One big difference is that English is taught from ayounger age in these countries (first grade of elementary school in Thailand and third grade of elementary
school in Korea). Another difference is that students at
language schools in Korea often study 3,4 or 5 times aweek, and, in Thailand, students at language schools
often have much longer lessons, especially in Bangkok;
otherwise it wouldn’t be worth their while spending
hours in the traffic jams getting to the school.
“Kids get more contact hours outside of Japan.
Teachers, too, seem to be getting more training. What
does that mean? I think it means a book has to bedifferent than it appears on the surface. For the Japanese market, it needs to be fun and slow, but for othermarkets, it has to have more depth.”
The authors’ secrets
The people who contributed to this article are all
successful authors. The obvious question, of course, is
how they got to be that way? Not surprisingly, experience is a key point:“The key for me is always to write from the perspective of an experienced classroom teacher. I am ateacher first and writer second. And if I ever doubted
that, my bank manager would quickly remind me!”
“I teach a lot (30 hours a week), and I only write forthe kinds of students I teach. I also try to make the jobof teaching easier for the hectic lifestyle most teachers
have in Japan.”“I guess that all boils down to one word: experience.”
Yes, that one word, plus a few related ones:“I have used over 60 textbooks during my teachingcareer in Japan and have gained some experience inwhat works and what doesn’t.”“I worked with editors and advisors who have also
worked here for a long time.”“I try to write books that I would like to use myself.
Writing a textbook is a very similar process to designing
one’s own course materials, and many of the ‘classic’
EFL textbooks were directly based on materials authors
developed for their own classes. But there is one majordifference: a textbook (if it is to be successful) will be
used by teachers with different teaching styles, different
amounts and types of experience, and of different
nationalities. It should also be adaptable to different
teaching/learning contexts and student needs.”
Oh, yes. One other thing—the wild card:“Another secret is being lucky—an author is notalways in a position to choose the type of book,publisher, editor, co-author, or designer. But they are
all crucial; it’s a team effort. It’s a little bit like those
Oscar acceptance speeches: ‘First of all, I’d like tothank God . . . .’”In publishing, to some degree you make your own
luck. There’s the image of a teacher having a great idea,
sitting down, drafting a manuscript, submitting it to a
The Language Teacher 24:2

Feature: Helgesen
publisher . . . and the rest is history. It rarely happensthat way. In many cases, the publisher knows the kindof book or series it needs to complement its list. The
publisher then goes searching for authors.
“One editor told me that most ELT texts are commissioned, not submitted and accepted. That told me I
needed to build my reputation so someone would ask
me to write for him or her, rather than try to write atext and then get someone to publish it.”“I spent several years doing reviews for various publishers, and in that process not only had the chance tomake my voice heard, but much more importantly, got
a sense of how to look carefully and critically at texts
with an eye to how they could be made better. While
this may seem a long backdoor approach to becoming
an author, I’m quite glad I took my time and had thisexperience, for I probably learned more from doing thisreview work with the authors and editors I worked withthan I did in, say, graduate school.”“I was doing JALT presentations. My to-be editor
came up to me and asked me if I was interested inreviewing a book she was working on. I said, sure. A
month later, she contacted me and said uh, the bookwasn’t ready to be reviewed yet—in fact, it wasn’t evenwritten yet, as the writers didn’t work out, would I be
interested in authoring? And we went from there.”
Changes in publishing
Publishing, like most industries, is experiencing majorchanges. One cause is technology:“Technology has made tremendous changes to theway textbooks are produced. As far as writing is concerned, it is now possible to communicate easily withco-authors and editors wherever you or they may be by
fax, email, and phone. It is possible to exchange files
and make changes to a manuscript extremely quickly.
Word processing and page layout programs enable anauthor to produce near-professional drafts, whichfacilitate piloting in class, although most publishers
prefer a final manuscript that is not ‘over-designed’.”Many of us feel that, for all the talk about technology, the real changes that affect the students and theindustry have hardly started.
“There are wonderful opportunities, but the expectations from new technology are often way ahead of
the reality. In the past, we saw this with underused
language labs. We’ve seen it with educational CDROMs, which are a wonderful learning tool, but whichjust haven’t taken off in Japan.”“CD-ROMs and the Internet have great potential but
few have really tapped into that potential yet. The early
CD-ROMs were mostly words on paper turned intowords on screen. They are getting better but there’s stilla long way to go. The same can be said for the Internet—
lots of potential but most of it untapped.”“My gut feeling however is that jazzy technology
still does not replace good pedagogy and well-structured book-based activities and tasks.”
February 2000

“It will be quite interesting to see how web-based
publishing, for example, will change the way we thinkboth about writing and about purchasing books.”
Another major change in publishing has been
merger mania. In 1990, JALT had 102 associate members, mostly publishers. Now there are 66. Macmillan
swallowed Heinemann. Pearson grew out of AddisonWesley, Prentice Hall, and Longman, which had
previously taken over Lingual House, Nelson, Harrap’s,
and a list of others.
Authors have mixed feelings:“Generally, when a company becomes larger, it becomes less flexible and more bureaucratic. It has more
problems making decisions on a local level. They waste
a lot of time in the decision-making process, whichhurts authors, teachers, and students. Material becomesold before it ever reaches the students. Give me a
speedboat any day over a luxury liner like the Titanic.”“On balance, I think (the mergers are) bad. There is abigger gap between those who are already establishedand those who are not, and fewer opportunities fornewcomers. There seems to be less happening at a grassroots level. Perhaps, in time, there will be a reaction to
all this, and many smaller companies will start up.
“It all smacks of monopolization of the market,
decreased competition, potential sameness of the
products, overly conservative and cautious publishing agendas.”Some authors do see positive aspects:“Perhaps (there will be) more rational consolidationof resources between the relatively fewer publishers,
perhaps bigger marketing budgets for promotion of
the books, perhaps more budget resources for teacher
development seminars/workshops, perhaps less reliance on the mythical ‘blockbuster’ so that the publisher can concentrate more on smaller, regional/
country-specific projects.”
One person, ever the optimist, went so far as to say
the following:“In theory, fewer companies means fewer chances
for new authors, and fewer new ideas. In practice, I’m
not sure. On the other hand, if an author has a
successful title with a large publisher, he or she stands
to sell more books, make more money, and descend
into a life of debauchery a tad quicker.”
Right, this despite the fact that royalties usuallywork out to something well under ¥100/hour.
Horror stories
All of the authors involved in this article are positive
about the publishing process. However, like any endeavor, there are negatives. A couple that are telling:“The publishing world can be incredibly arrogant.
An editor may have spent one year teaching on the JET
program and then become the Japan expert for a majorinternational publisher. Other publishers who havenever worked in Japan are often so confident in theirarmchair theories about the Japanese market. Most of15

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The Language Teacher 24:2

Feature: Helgesen
the courses which didn’t come out of the Japaneseclassroom but became best-sellers here did so by accident, not because some publisher in the UK or US
deeply understood the Japanese market.”“(I’ve had) impossible deadlines—writing a text,
workbook, and Teacher’s Manual in six months, which
included writing the TM before the book was evenedited. THEN to have the publishing date pushed
back, first 6 months and then 18 months. And then tohave the main character in the text changed a year
after final submission! It’s almost enough to drive you
over the edge! I felt kind of like (Gone with the Windauthor) Margaret Mitchell would have felt if her editor
had said, ‘Wonderful book you have there. I know it’sfinished, but after talking with some focus groups,
we’ve decided we’ll have much more chance of sellingthe book if Scarlet O’Hara were a man instead of awoman. And if you had her living in Vermont...’.”
Our best advice
The authors involved in this article are assuming those
who read it do so for one of two reasons. Some readers
may be teachers with a general interest in how books are
written and how, in the authors’ views, Japan-appropriate books get to be that way. Others, perhaps the larger
group, are teachers who have thought about writing abook themselves. To that end, the participating authors
each offered bits of advice. We hope they help.
“Work with a co-author. It is so much more fun towrite with others and to bounce ideas off of each otherand to keep each other honest when an idea reallydoesn’t work. I have had more painfully hard bellylaughs when writing and working with my co-authors
than any other time I can think of. It makes the difficult
writing experience fun. Someone once said that writing
is easy. Just stare at a blank sheet of paper until bloodforms on your forehead. This is true only if you write
alone; when you work with others it’s great!”“Work backwards. Have an idea of where you want anactivity, page, unit or book to go before you sit down to
try to get there. You start with the final ‘product’ andwork backwards from there. Though in fact, you may
never wind up getting to that point (because something
more interesting happened along that way) it’s a formof poetics which works quite well for me.”
“Always be honest in your dealings with publishers.
Apart from the question of basic morality, one reason
for this is the high incidence of takeovers and publishing employees changing companies!”“Offer to review textbooks for publishers—they arealways looking for reliable, informative reviewers.
Offer to write workbooks or teacher’s books for courses;
they can lead to other work.”“Teach as many classes as possible for some years.
Record what you did in class. You might stick to one
book, strictly stick to it to the point you do exactly
what the teacher’s book tells you to. Teacher’s Books
teach you a lot more than the student book itself.
February 2000

That’s where the author talks to the teachers who use
the book. By the time you finish one year following
one author, you find yourself with your own ideas
because your teaching situation is different from theauthor’s.”“Question the assumptions behind methodology
and ideas imported from teaching situations in othercountries. Just because somebody famous said something, it doesn’t mean it applies in the same way inJapan. There may be fundamental differences between
the situations in which experts formed their ideas andthe Japanese classroom.”“Don’t be afraid to throw away what you’ve written.
It is, in fact, sometimes helpful when one reaches amajor block to simply crumple the paper or delete thefile and then start over again, after, of course, a good
break away from it. The fresh perspective and the clean
file is often just what’s needed.”“Get out there and do things—present workshops,
volunteer in JALT. Get a good reputation regarding
your specialty. Get your name out there as someone
who has ideas and is willing to work.”“If you are dissatisfied with a textbook you are using,
don’t just bitch about it; rewrite exercises so that you
think they work better. If you develop your own
handouts, think of them as pages from a textbook.
Think about layout, illustrations, white space, clear
and concise instructions (rubrics).”“They say every teacher has a book in them. I thinkreality is that teachers have first drafts in them. If you
can make it through the changes that come after that,then you’ve got a shot.”“Advice? Persistence, tenacity, flexibility, belief inyour ideas, willingness to adapt, more persistence,
tons of coffee (and beer), willingness to give up lots ofweekends, ability to take massive quantities of criticism without getting too bent out of shape, more
persistence, thorough research of the published material that’s already out there, and a well-placed connection or two in the ELT publishing world. Oh yeah, andmore persistence.”“Be yourself. Don’t pattern yourself after the successof others. Be original. Don’t pattern yourself after
other textbooks. Do something different.”“Having a good time with what you’re doing. Writing books is hard work. The chances that it will be amajor hit are minimal. Make sure you’re having fun
while you do it.”
Reference
Prowse, P. (1998). How writers write: Testimony from authors. In B. Tomlinson (Ed.), Materials development in language teaching (pp. 130-145). Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.

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The Language Teacher 24:2

Materials For Cultural Awareness:
Combining Language, Literature, and Culture in the Mind
Brian Tomlinson
National University of Singapore
I’d like you to read two short poems by Roger McGough,one of the Liverpool Poets. Both could be consideredculture bound, and therefore very difficult for L2
learners to understand. Or they could be consideredculture rich, and therefore very useful for L2 learners
to experience. Here’s the first one.
Vinegarsometimes
i feel like a priest
in a fish & chip queue
quietly thinking
as the vinegar runs throughhow nice it would be
to buy supper for two(McGough, 1983)
Reflections on Reading “Vinegar”
What mental processes did you use in experiencing
the poem? What did you do in your mind? Think
about it for a moment.
Did you see vinegar in your mind before you started
to read? Was it in a bottle? Was it in your kitchen or ina restaurant? Was it in a chip shop? Mine was in a chipshop; but that’s because I share a cultural backgroundwith Roger McGough.
Did you see the priest in the fish and chip queue?
Did you feel the vinegar running through?
What can you remember about the poem now? Try
seeing images of the poem in your mind and talking to
yourself about what it means.
My memory is a very vivid combination of mental
images. I can see a priest and the poet in a fish and chipshop on Scotland Road in Liverpool. It is cold outside
but warm inside. I can smell the fat and feel the vinegar
running through the newspaper which the priest’s
fish and chips are wrapped in. I feel lonely in the way
I sometimes did when I lived alone in Liverpool. Thisis a very personal response to the poem, what Rosenblatt(1994) called an aesthetic response in which the reader
lives in the text. Obviously, no L2 learner would havethe same aesthetic response as mine, but what I’mgoing to argue is that it’s possible to help learners toachieve aesthetic responses to texts set in cultures
which are very different from their own.

My point is that when I read “Vinegar” I didn’t justunderstand the words, I experienced the poem. I did so
both cognitively and affectively, linguistically andnon-linguistically. I visualised, I talked to myself, I
made connections, I felt feelings and sensations. I used
the “language of the brain” (Bolstad, 1997:13). Of
course, I was able to have a total experience of thepoem because I’ve had an almost total experience ofwhat it refers to. If you haven’t had directly relevant
life experiences to connect the poem to, then you
won’t have as total an experience of the poem as I did(especially if some of the words are unfamiliar, too).
But what I’m going to argue is that helping learners toexperience literature is far more profitable than getting them to study it. Experiencing literature multidimensionally can not only facilitate language
acquisition (e.g., Mitchell & Myles, 1998) but it canhelp to develop cultural awareness too. The best way
to develop understanding of another culture is not toobserve it or study it, but to experience it. If that can’t
be done directly, it can be done through experiencing
it in literature and then reflecting on the norms of that
culture and the equivalent norms in your own. It is,after all, when we travel that we most think about ourown culture. We do so because we become aware of itsdifferences from the culture we are travelling in. Andof course we can travel through literature, too.
Here’s the second poem. It’s very short, but it’sculturally rich.
Missedout of work
divorced
usually pissed
he aimed
low in lifeandmissed.
(McGough, 1991)
How did you respond to the poem? Did you see
someone in your mind? Was he someone you know?
Did you feel anything for the man in the poem?
When I first read the poem I experienced what
Masuhara Hitomi (this issue) calls multi-dimensional

本論では、文学の使用を主張し、テキストを勉強する前に学習者が個人的にそれを体験することの大切さを強調するcultural awarenessアク
ティビティのアプローチを例示する。文学を通して他文化を体験することによって自文化をより深く理解することができ、このようなawarenessは学習者の考え方を広げるのに価値のあるものである。この体験アプローチは学習したことが心の中で関連を深めるために感覚と内なる声を活用することが大切であるという研究に基づいている。心の中でこのような関連を深めることによって言語習得とc u l t u r a lawarenessの両方を学習者がどのように達成したかを述べる。

February 2000

19

Feature: Tomlinson
representation. That is, I did not just decode the poem
linguistically, I represented it in my mind through a
combination of sensory images, affective responses,
and inner speech. I saw a man, who was similar to afriend of mine, queueing for his social security money,
I felt both pity and anger, and I said to myself, “Poor sod.”
Again, I was able to really engage with the poem
because I have direct experience of the culture inwhich it’s based. A similar experience could be provided, though, through British literary works whichhighlight the effects of poor education and continued
unemployment on confidence and morale. What I’marguing is that, instead of explaining the cultural
background to a text, we should provide more experience of similar issues and themes. When I taught a
British Culture class at Kobe University, the students
were initially confused and horrified to discover British economic and spiritual poverty; but, as they experienced more films and poems, they were moved tothink more deeply about life in Britain and in Japan.
Definitions
By awareness I mean an open-minded, gradually developing, internal understanding, as distinct from knowledge, which is external and static (Tomlinson, 1994).
By cultural awareness I mean awareness of how othergroups of people think, feel, and behave.
By literature I mean spoken or written texts which
achieve their effect implicitly, which leave gaps for thereader to fill in from their own experience, which get
the reader to think and feel by interacting with thetext, which both make use of and add to the receiver’s
experience of life, which seek to achieve an aesthetic
response in which the reader lives in the text. Such
literature could be experienced in the form of novels,
poems, short stories, articles, plays, films, advertisements, or even birthday cards. The important point isthat in our first language we do not normally study
literature, we experience it (Tomlinson, 1998b).
By culture I mean the behaviour and beliefs of acommunity of people. There is a universal culture
which unites all human beings in shared emotions,
feelings and instincts. This is an affective culture
which is manifested in different ways in different partsof the world but to which we all belong. There are
ethnic, racial, regional, and national cultures whichshare characteristics with other cultures but which aredefined by their distinct behaviours (e.g., Japanesebowing vs. American handshakes). There are also
cultures which reflect communities of shared interestsand goals (e.g., there is a real-ale culture; a soccer
culture; a steam railway culture — all cultures to which
I belong). And there is even the culture of oneself. Eachof us is similar to other people because of our sharedmembership of community cultures. But each of us
also differs from everybody else in what we think, feel,believe, and do. Of course, some of us diverge from thenorm more than others do.
20

The more we understand and empathise with cultures to which we do not belong, the more positive andconstructive we can be. In my view, this is the main
objective of education, and one of the most effective
ways of achieving it is through helping our learners toexperience literature. In that way, they can come tounderstand other cultures and deepen their understanding of their own culture, too.
By combining in the mind, I mean that in responding
to an experience we fire neural paths in the brain
which connect what we are experiencing now to what
we have experienced before and what we expect toexperience in the future (Masuhara, this issue;
Tomlinson, 1998a, 2000a, 2000b). These neural paths
are both cognitive and affective, linguistic and nonlinguistic, sensory and reflective. The more connections
we achieve, the more we are likely to understand theexperience and the more likely we are to retain andgain from the experience, too.
You might like to go back and see what connections
you make when reading “Vinegar” and “Missed” again.
An Example of Combining Language, Literature,
and Culture in the Mind
In order to illustrate the principles and procedures of
my approach to combining language, literature, andculture in the mind (see also Tomlinson, 1999). I
would like to give in lesson plan form an example ofa lesson I’ve taught with foreign language students.
Level
Elementary and aboveTime
40-45 minutes
Aims
To stimulate emotive responses to a poem in the L2
and to help learners to express and develop their
responses.
To promote the use of visualisation and inner speechwhen using the L2.
To develop awareness of the issues of old age andloneliness in Britain and in Japan.
Procedure
1. Tell the learners to think of an old woman that theyknow. Tell them to try to see pictures in their mindsof their old lady, to see where she is, to see what she
is doing, to see what she is wearing. Tell them totalk to themselves about their feelings towards theold woman.
2. Tell the learners to form pairs and to tell each otherabout their old woman. Tell them to describe thepictures of their old woman in their mind and to
express their feelings towards her.
3. Tell the learners you are going to read them a poem
about an old woman and that, as they listen, theyshould try to see pictures of her in their minds and

The Language Teacher 24:2

Feature: Tomlinson
to talk to themselves about their feelings towards
her.
4. Read the poem below to the learners:
I’m an old, old lady
And I don’t have long to live.
I am only strong enough to takeNot to give. No time left to give.
I want to drink, I want to eat,
I want my shoes taken off my feet.
I want to talk but not to walk
Because if I walk, I have to know
Where it is I want to go.
I want to sleep but not to dream.
I want to play and win every gameTo live with love but not to love
The world to move but me not move
I want I want for ever and ever
The world to work, the world to be clever.
Leave me be, but don’t leave me alone.
That’s what I want. I’m a big round stone
Sitting in the middle of a thunderstorm.
There you are: that’s true.
That’s me. Now: you.
(Arden & D’Arcy, 1962)
5. Tell the learners to think back over the poem, to see
pictures in their minds of the old lady, to decide
what they think about her.
6. Tell the learners to get into groups and to discuss
their responses to the following statement about
the old lady in the poem:“At the end of the poem the old lady says, ‘Now:you.’ Write a poem about yourself in which you
express your feelings about life.”
10. Get the learners to walk around the room reading
the cards. Then tell them to choose one of theactivities and to sit down and start it in the areaaround the card. They can do the activities individually, in pairs, or in groups. It’s up to them.
11. Invite volunteers to present the products of theiractivity (e.g. recite the poem, display their painting, report their discussion etc.).
12. Get the students in groups to discuss the following
questions:“What does the poem tell you about British
culture?”“How do you think Japanese old ladies you know
are similar or different to the lady in the poem?”
Comment
A similar procedure can obviously be followed for alesson based on any emotive poem or extract fromliterature. You might try, for example, to use this procedure with the two Roger McGough poems quoted
above. It can also be followed for lessons based on
factual texts, which can be used to stimulate emotive
reactions to events, places, processes, or issues and to get
students to compare another culture with their own.
Such activities could be used to replace or supplement language decoding activities which are based ona potentially engaging text in the coursebook.

“I don’t like this lady. She’s very selfish.”
7. Give the learners the poem and three pictures ofold ladies and tell them in their groups to decide
which of the old ladies wrote the poem. (NB:
Ideally, one of the old ladies is smiling, one isholding her head in her hands, and the other islooking sadly out of a window.)
8. Get each group to join with another group andthen to discuss their answers to 6 and 7 above.
9. Whilst the groups are discussing their answers, put
up the following instructions on cards on theclassroom walls. Each instruction should be on adifferent card and the cards should be spaced out
around the room.
“Learn to recite the poem using a voice which
you think sounds like the old lady.”“Paint a picture of the how you see the poem.”“You are the old lady. Write a letter to your son
in Australia.”“You are the old lady. Write your diary for today.”“The old lady goes to the park and meets an old
man on a park bench. Write the dialogue between them.”“You are the old lady’s family. Hold a meeting todecide how you can help her.”February 2000

Conclusion
I’d like to urge all educators to include cultural awareness in their curricula and all teachers and materials
developers to use an experiential approach in theirdevelopment of cultural awareness activities. In thatway, we can help learners to broaden and develop
their minds and to achieve language proficiency too.
References
Arden, J. & D’Arcy, M. (1962). The happy haven. New English
dramatists 4. London: Penguin.
Bolstad, R. (1997). Using the language of the brain. The
Language Teacher, 21(2), 12-15.
Masuhara, H. (this issue). Language problem? No, connection
problem!
McGough, R. (1983). Vinegar. In A. Henri, R. McGough, & B.
Patten, The Mersey sound, 96. London: Penguin.
McGough, R. (1991). Missed. In R. McGough, You at the back.
London: Puffin.
Mitchell, R. & Myles, F. (1998). Second language learningtheories. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Rosenblatt, L. M. (1994). The transactional theory of reading
and writing. In R. B. Ruddell, M. R. Ruddell, & H. Singer(Eds.), Theoretical models and processes of reading, 10571092. Newark, NJ: International Reading Association.
Tomlinson, cont’d on p. 27.

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The Language Teacher 24:2

外国語で読解できないのは語学力のせい？―神経科学に基づいた読解教授法と教材
増原仁美

February 2000

23

Feature: Masuhara

24

The Language Teacher 24:2

Feature: Masuhara

February 2000

25

Feature: Masuhara

26

The Language Teacher 24:2

Feature: Masuhara

Willis, cont’d from p. 11.
Willis, J. (1996a). A framework for task-based learning. Harlow:
Longman.
Willis, J. (1996b). Consciousness-raising activities in thelanguage classroom. In J. Willis & D. Willis (Eds.), Challenge and change in language teaching. Oxford: Heinemann
ELT.
Willis, J. (1997). Exploring spoken language: Analysis activities for trainers and trainees. In I. McGrath (Ed.),
Learning to train. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice HallInternational.
Willis, J. (1998a). Task-based learning—What kind of adventure?” The Language Teacher 22, 7(17-18).
Willis, J. (1998b). Concordancing in the classroom without
a computer. In B. Tomlinson (Ed.), Materials development
in second language teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Willis, J. (1999). Designing and using tasks to promote
optimum language development. In A. Barfield, R. Betts,
J. Cunningham, N. Dunn, H. Katsura, K. Kobayashi, N.
Padden, N. Parry, & M. Watanabe (Eds.), Focus on theclassroom: Interpretations. Proceedings of the 24th JALT international conference (pp. 119-126). Tokyo: The Japan Association for Language Teaching.
Willis, J. & Willis, D. (Eds.). (1996). Challenge and change inlanguage teaching. Oxford: Heinemann ELT.

Tomlinson, cont’d from p. 21.
Tomlinson, B. (1994). Pragmatic awareness activities. Language Awareness, 3 (3/4), 119-129.
Tomlinson, B. (1998a). Seeing what they mean. In B.
Tomlinson (Ed.), Materials development in language teaching,265-278. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Tomlinson, B. (1998b). And now for something not completely different: an approach to language through literature. Reading in a Foreign Language, 11(2), 177-189.
Tomlinson, B. (1999). Materials development for language
teachers. Modern English Teacher, 8(1), 62-64.
Tomlinson, B. (2000a). (in process). The inner voice; a criticalfactor in L2 learning. The Journal of the Imagination in
Language Learning, 4.
Tomlinson, B. (2000b). (in process). Talking to learn: the roleof the inner voice in L2 learning. Applied Language Learning.
February 2000

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Run It Past Rod

Kent Hill

An Interview With Rod Ellis
On one of his frequent trips to Japan, Rod Ellis, authorof SLA Research and Language Teaching and coauthorof Impact Grammar, agreed to an interview with Kent
Hill. Rod is presently director of the Institute of
Language Teaching and Learning at The University of
Auckland.
KH: The gap between SLA research and teachingpedagogy is recurrently mentioned in SLA Researchand Language Teaching. What can materials development do to narrow the gap?
RE: A possible way is through materials development.
In fact there is, particularly in British applied linguistics,
a long tradition of researchers or applied linguists involving themselves in materials development. Perhaps
the most obvious example is Widdowson’s involvement in the Focus series, which was an English forSpecific Purposes (ESP) set of books. The approach toteaching ESP that those books embodied derives directly from Widdowson’s own theory of language teaching as reflected in Teaching Language as Communicationand other publications that he produced at the end of
the 1970s and beginning of the 1980s. So Widdowson
is a classic example of someone prepared to suggest ways
in which his theoretical ideas can be fed into language
teaching, and the approach he followed is materials
development.
I’ve tried something similar. Much of my recent
work has been on form-focused instruction, in particular how one can do form-focused instruction in a
way that might be compatible with how learners learn.
This led recently to the development of grammar
teaching materials in conjunction with Stephen Gaies.
KH: Should materials be required to have some formof validity or credibility the same as all research has?
RE: People can do materials evaluation for two
rather different purposes. They can carry out an evaluation to decide whether the materials achieve what
they are supposed to achieve; that’s a kind of aims
evaluation. Or, alternatively, they can carry out anevaluation because they want to obtain some understanding of what students do when they use thematerials and to improve the materials. With the firstaim, the issues of reliability and validity do apply,
because if your evaluation is not valid or reliable, then
you can’t say whether the materials are or are notachieving their aim. But with the second aim, theissues of reliability and validity are not really so crucial. What is more crucial is informativeness, theextent to which the evaluation that you’ve undertaken has given you helpful insights as to what’s goingon when you use these materials with students.
KH: Would a teacher’s conducting action research—in the sense of a materials microevaluation of a task—
be useful to SLA research and teaching pedagogy?
February 2000

Obirin/Nihon University

RE: Materials evaluation can also be of two kinds: it
can take the form of a macroevaluation, where we might
try to evaluate a whole book or a whole set of materials
designed for a particular course, or it can involve what
I call microevaluation, where we take a particular classor perhaps the materials needed for a single lesson andproceed to submit those to a fairly detailed evaluation.
What I’ve suggested is that doing microevaluations ofmaterials is potentially an effective way of doing action
research. Teachers very often think of their teaching interms of what materials am I going to use tomorrow? andtherefore asking teachers to do action research following the traditional idea—identifying problems and possible solutions to problems—is not something thatperhaps comes easily to them.
So, instead of taking the problem-based approach,teachers could take a materials-based approach to action research. That is, to find out a bit more about what
happens when students actually do a task. They can basetheir action research on some particular task, to try tofind out what’s going on, or to find out whether the aimsof the task are actually being met when the task is usedin the classroom. In general, my postgraduate students
found microevaluations very revealing. They enabled
them to get inside their teaching and to discover things
that they had not been aware of before. They also ledthem to propose ways in which they could modify thetask, in order to try it again—so in that respect, themicroevaluations worked very well as action research.
KH: You’re a researcher, a teacher educator, and amaterials developer. How do you see these three roles
to be interrelated?
RE: In my work in general, these things have beeninterrelated. First, as a researcher, I’ve tended to researchissues that are of theoretical interest in SLA research but
are also of potential pedagogical importance.
The same is true for my work as a materials developer, although I have to be pretty honest here: When
one develops materials, there is always a tension
between the sorts of materials that one might want todevelop on the basis of one’s theoretical understanding of SLA and the kinds of materials that publishers
think that they can sell. There are necessary compromises that have to be made.
I can give one very concrete example of that kind ofcompromise. Recently, together with Stephen Gaies,
I developed a set of materials for teaching grammar
through awareness raising rather than through production practice, and one of the types of activities
that we have in these materials we call noticing activities—interpretation tasks where students are given atext which is gapped. They have to listen to a recording of the text and fill in the gaps through processing
the aural input.
29

Interview: Ellis
Now, one of the things that we discussed when wewere developing these materials was whether we should
give some guidance as to what students needed to dowhen they filled the gaps—for example, by providing
the verb in the unmarked form—or whether one
should leave the gap without any clue as to how it
should be filled in. My preference was for not giving
any clues, but forcing learners to listen very closely tothe text in order to work out what the exact word was.
But the editor of these materials felt that the learners
for whom these materials were primarily intended,
Asian learners of English, needed some assistance inprocessing the forms that they were supposed to listenfor. Therefore, he insisted strongly that it would bebetter to give a clue in the form of the unmarked verb,
and eventually Stephen and I agreed to do this.
Retrospectively, though, many teachers who areusing these materials have asked, “Why do you givethem the verb? If you give them the verb they don’t
really need to listen as they can just use the context to
put the verb into the correct form. And we’re back into
the usual type of blank filling exercise, whereas if you
didn’t give them the verb then it’s necessary for themto process the text, to listen carefully to the text.”
So in this case, my own inclination as a theorist andteachers’ own understanding of how the materials
might work best actually concurred. But the editor wasconcerned more with the marketability of the materials. Publishers sometimes insist on compromises thatreally aren’t necessary, and if they were prepared to bea little bit more adventuresome, in fact there would be
no negative impact on sales.
KH: Are publishers slow to take risks and makeinnovations? Does this hinder putting the results of
SLA research to use?
RE: Are publishers slow to accept innovations inmaterials? The answer is definitely yes. Nevertheless,publishers are aware of what constitute the best sellers
in the particular area. If we take grammar practice books,
they are aware that the grammar practice books thathave made the most money are grammar practice books
like, say, Murphy, and therefore there is a tendency forthem to produce some kind of clone of Murphy, so thatthey can get their share of the market in this particulararea. This tends to preclude producing grammar practice books that are radically different.
Recently, I undertook an analysis of the methodological options that were used in six grammar practice books, one of which was Murphy, another ofwhich was Eastwood—both best-selling grammar practice books. One of the things that struck me about theresults of my analysis was that the principal methodological options being used in these state-of-the-art
1990s grammar practice books were exactly the sameas the principle methodological options being used ingrammar practice books produced in the 1950s or the
1960s, and what constitutes a grammar practice book—certainly from the methodological perspective—hasn’t
30

really moved on very much. The two main methodological options were to give the learners an explicit
description of a grammar point and then give themsome practice exercises, typically of a very controlled
nature, such as filling in the blanks.
Why haven’t grammar practice books moved on?
There are many possible reasons, but one reason is thatgrammar practice books that utilize those two methodological options have proved very successful commercially. Therefore, publishers are perhaps reluctant tochange them, so the changes were more cosmetic changes
than methodological changes. Asking publishers topublish a grammar practice book that is radically different to the Murphy or the Eastwood format is a challenge
to them, and they are somewhat wary of doing so.
Then the question that you wanted me to address was
how easy had I found it to incorporate the theoreticalideas that come from my work in SLA research into mymaterials writing and materials publishing . . .
KH: How receptive publishers are to it . . .
RE: Perhaps understandably, publishers are very
often reluctant to make radical changes to formulasthat have led to publishing successes in the past. I’ve
been lucky, because with Stephen Gaies I have managed to publish Impact Grammar, which I think is very
different from traditional grammar practice books. It’s
interesting to consider why this was possible.
There are two major reasons why Impact Grammar
got to be published. One was that it rode on the
coattails of the other books in the Impact series. So the
publisher, Addison Wesley Longman, felt more confident in publishing it, because they felt that teachers
would buy it simply because it had the Impact name.
The other reason why it got to be published was that
it was developed under rather unique circumstances.
It wasn’t developed directly by Longman, but by a
private company run by Michael Rost that was contracted by Longman to develop the Impact series. Mike
Rost, as well as being the owner of a publishingcompany, is also an applied linguist. He is a researcher
and has written books on applied linguistics. Mike
Rost, perhaps more than anyone, has one foot in eachcamp. He has a foot in the researcher/theoretician
camp and also a foot in the practical world of teachers.
This meant that we were developing a book withsomeone who had a very solid understanding of thetheoretical principles that underlay it.
This did help to produce a book that was innovative.
It’s probably rare that textbook writers have the opportunity to work with editors who are themselves applied
linguists, and the situation that we enjoyed in developing Impact Grammar in that respect is unique. One only
wishes that this sort of situation existed more generally.
KH: It’s almost action publishing. Why does Impact
Grammar use listening as the form of input?
RE: One of the ways in which Impact Grammar isinnovative is that the data learners work with is aural
input, rather than written. If you look at grammar
The Language Teacher 24:2

Interview: Ellis
practice books, you’ll find that very few of themactually provide learners with the opportunity to listen
to texts, as opposed to that of reading texts. We chose
listening texts because we felt that one of the things
that learners need to do when they are learning grammar is to notice particular grammatical features as theyoccur in input. In particular, we felt that they need to
be able to notice these features when they occur inaural input. In general, learners—perhaps Asian learners in particular—have very considerable difficulty inprocessing aural input. They have difficulty in processing it for meaning, and because of this, they havevery little processing space left to actually notice thegrammatical features that are present in the input.
Current theories of SLA argue that noticing is essential
in order for acquisition to take place. Therefore, one of
the things that the Impact Grammar materials try to do
is train the skill of noticing in aural input.
We also want learners to be able to process grammatical features in real time—not in a very controlled
fashion, but as they hear them. Obviously, aural input
is essential, because with written input learners havethe opportunity to read the text five times, to translateit, to engage in what I call control processing, but whenlearners are listening to aural input, they have toprocess a feature as they hear it. Of course, they canreplay the tape, but even then, they’re still processing
it again in real time, so you are forcing automatic
processing. One of the conditions for successful acquisition is that learners engage in automatic processing.
Hence our use of listening rather than written texts.
KH: You label your tasks consciousness raising (CR).
There has been a substantial amount written about
conscious experiences being too subjective and therefore making external observation of CR impossible.
Could you explain why you stick with the term CR?
RE: The term CR has probably been the preferredterm in the literature. It goes back to the 1980s, when
Sharwood-Smith used it. Also, Rutherford used it, I’ve
used it, and it has been fairly widely accepted now inteaching circles. Sharwood-Smith has argued that researchers or teachers can not necessarily raise consciousness in learners minds, because that’s somethingthat learners can only do for themselves. All that the
researchers or teachers can do is to fiddle around with
the input that the learners are exposed to, hoping thatthe input will raise consciousness in some way. For thisreason, Sharwood-Smith has proposed that we use theterm input enhancement rather than CR. I stuck withCR, because the term has become generally acceptedby teachers. I don’t find too many teachers using input
enhancement. I do find them using the term CR.
I’ve also stuck with it because I wanted a term that
contrasted with the notion of practice. When I first
introduced the term CR, I wanted it to refer to adifferent approach to grammar teaching. Practicematerials are directed at getting learners to produce
the target language structure; consciousness-raising
February 2000

materials are directed at developing awareness of how
the grammatical structure works.
One of the general problems of applied linguistics isthat it’s full of terms and at various points people comealong and say, “Well, perhaps this isn’t the best term
for x, and maybe this will be a better term for x.” People
have to decide whether they want to go with the newterm or stick with the older term.
KH: Earlier, you touched on the relationship between meaning- and form-focused tasks. Do you feelthat they have different goals, or can materials focus
on both simultaneously?
RE: This is perhaps one of the essential questions
about language teaching facing us at the start of thiscentury. That is, the relationship between meaningfocused and form-focused instruction. There are problems with trying to integrate the two. When you try it,
you run the risk of compromising the communicative
part of your program. Students perceive the entire
program as requiring accuracy and a display of knowledge, rather than efforts to communicate meaning.
Recently, Michael Long has been arguing that thebest way to integrate a focus on meaning and a focus
on form is methodologically, rather than throughdesign. From a materials point of view, this suggeststhat all we need are meaning-focused materials andthen methodological guidance to the teacher as tohow a focus-on-form (FonF) can be incorporated in
the context of doing the meaning-focused activities.
What Long has in mind is that the FonF should occur
through the feedback that the teacher gives to learners
as they attempt to do communicative activities. For
example, if learners make errors, the teacher can stepin and model the correct form by means of recasts. If
one does it this way, then in essence one would rely
entirely on a communicative task-based syllabus.
KH: Perhaps some methodological outline could be
provided in the teacher’s book.
RE: Yes the teacher’s book could include possible
grammatical structures that the teacher might lookout for, to see if students perform them correctly, but
by and large the teacher would have to act responsively, in the sense of responding to grammaticalproblems that arose when students were trying toperform a particular communicative activity.
KH: Is that only half of an approach then? Isn’t therea proactive situation as well as a reactive situation?
RE: Right. The two ways of dealing with form
focused instruction are both necessary. We could haveseparate components for meaning- and form-focused
instruction. The form-focused component of our curriculum would follow a structural syllabus, based on
the kinds of problems that we know learners are likely
to make. There would be grammar lessons in such a
program. Then, in the meaning-focused part of the
program, there would still be the opportunity for FonF
to be introduced methodologically, through teachers’
responses to grammatical problems.
31

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The Language Teacher 24:2

From Blueprint to Edifice
An Architectural Approach toCurriculum and Materials Design
Approaching the construction process
In the construction of an edifice—a large, split-level
home, say—plans are drawn, the frame is assembled,
the structure is built, the interior is decorated and therooms are furnished. Many stakeholders give input
and, ideally, collaborate toward a common vision.
Architects, zoning officials, builders, electricians,
plumbers, interior designers and occupants are all
involved in the collaborative process. During eachphase of the work, their decisions reflect an interplayof their aesthetic preferences, practical needs, physicalresources, and external constraints. After that, regular
maintenance and occasional large-scale remodeling isundertaken. The result is a fluid, sometimes spontaneous, often circular, process of decision-making, problem solving, negotiation, and compromise.
The edifice of a university-based coordinatedlanguage program similarly undergoes a kind ofinteractive construction process. The organizational
goals, curriculum, content, materials, and mechanisms for maintenance inevitably reflect the interaction—at times smooth, at times not—of various
philosophical tensions, pedagogical dichotomies,
institutional pressures, and practical constraints.
(For a discussion of the many stakeholders involved in a university-based language program, see
Lindsay, 1997.) The result, as for our home above,is a fluid, sometimes spontaneous, often circular,
process of decision making, problem solving, negotiation, and, inevitably, compromise.
This article examines some of the competing issues
that influence the builders of a language program to
adopt certain perspectives over others in constructing the curriculum and materials. To illustrate theissues involved, examples are drawn from the Obirin
University English Language Program (OUELP).
Though it’s certainly not the only “model home” onthe market, the Obirin program has proven itself to bea structurally sturdy abode containing well-appointed,
coordinated “rooms” of core and elective courses toaccommodate the 35 teachers and 1000 students who
occupy them at any one time. More importantly, it
has for a number of years relied primarily on its own
in-house materials-writing “interior designers” to furnish and continuously refurbish its core rooms. The

Steven Gershon
Obirin University“interior designing” is not only the most time-consuming element of a program’s management, butalso, ultimately, the most visible manifestation of itsdistinctiveness.
Drawing the blueprints ➝ Needs: EGP, EAP, GEAC
A large, multi-room home is designed for the needs of
its future occupants. Since the builders may not know
precisely who the future occupants will be or what
they will need, however, they design a structure that
can accommodate a variety of occupants over time.
A language program may incline its course offerings
toward either English for General Purposes or English
for Specific Purposes (EGP or ESP), or any of ESP’s
similarly abbreviated branches, such as EOP, EAP,
EGAP, or ESAP—English for Occupational Purposes,
English for Academic Purposes, English for General
Academic Purposes, or English for Specific Academic
Purposes (Jordan, 1997). The starting point for auniversity language program’s curriculum and materials planning is an assessment of student needs.
The problem, of course, is determining those students’ needs. Far from the narrowly identifiable needsof a homogenous group of airline pilots or nurses,
unfortunately, university students’ needs are often
either broadly varied or essentially undefined. Many,in fact, are the proverbial TENOR students—Taking
English for No Obvious Reason. A large program must
attempt to accommodate them all.
To reflect this “open house” approach, the OUELP
targets a fairly inclusive set of program goals, which
incorporate• proficiency goals (extending language skills)• cognitive goals (understanding relevant cultural
knowledge)• affective goals (achieving a sense of self-esteem andempowerment)• transfer goals (mastering generic learning skills forfurther study).
In the context of changing student population andthis eclectic mix of design goals, we have seen the needto position the program midway between EGP and
EAP. Perhaps the more embracing acronym GEAC,
General English in an Academic Context, most aptly

家を建てるとき、まず、設計図が引かれ、材料が集められ、建物が建築され、内部が装飾され、部屋には家具が置かれる。設計士、建築業
者、インテリアデザイナー、居住者はみんなこの共同プロセスに携わっている。同様に大学の語学プログラムも双方向の建築プロセスを踏む。考え方の相違における緊張、教育上の分裂、組織のプレッシャー、実際上の制約などの相互作用を反映しながら、組織的な目標、カリ
キュラム、内容、教材、メインテナンスの手法などが決まっていく。たくさんの人々がインプットを与え、理想的には共通のビジョンに向かって協力するのである。意思決定、問題解決、交渉と妥協のプロセスは流動的で時には自発的で、しばしば堂々廻りをするものである。
本論では、カリキュラム作成や教材選択の過程でいろいろな意見の中で特定のものを採用するときに語学プログラムに影響を及ぼす様々な問題について検討する。

February 2000

33

Feature: Gershon
describes the OUELP’s set of working blueprints—
plans that are realized both in the structural framework (curriculum) and the interior (materials) design.
Building the framework ➝ Integrated skills
The foundation is prepared and the framework is put
in place. The blueprints call for a split-level design. On
the first floor is a large central multi-purpose living
space for all. Along the hallway are smaller rooms set
aside for various uses. The second floor shares the same
floor plan, with a multi-purpose living room andseparate smaller rooms down the hallway.
Just as student needs determine the functional focus
of English (General or Academic) adopted by a program,they also affect the structural framework within which
the curriculum and materials reside. EAP courses often
revolve around a common core of study skills divided
into receptive and productive skills (Jordan, 1997).
English programs in Japanese universities often segregate the written and oral skills, offering a collection ofskill-based courses—separate rooms, each opening on
the hallway, but none opening directly on another.
There are good reasons, logistical and pedagogical,
for structuring a program upon a discrete-skill framework, with each of the language skills timetabled to a
specific lesson. Likewise, a program may, for practicalor philosophical reasons, integrate the skills, allowing
the various language skills to flow through a course inan order dictated by the content. As well as offering theteacher the advantages of flexibility, an integrated
approach offers the students variety, interest and,arguably, a more natural, authentic framework for the
study of any content area (Brinton et al., 1989).
The OUELP framework, with its GEAC blueprint,
supports both integrated skills and discrete skill areas.
The integrated-skills first-year and second-year “multipurpose rooms” form the structural center of eachfloor, with students spending more of their time inthis “core” area. The separate-skill elective course“studios” down the hallway provide students both thespace and the opportunity to use other areas of the“house” to their own advantage.
The decision to erect an integrated-skills framework
for its core courses has also led the OUELP naturally toa content focus. Although “content-based” methodology often implies extensive use of authentic materials(Brinton 1989), the program’s GEAC bias has led it toadopt a “soft” version, with some authentic materialand some adapted or simplified. Rather than attempting to produce subject-specific content for each department, the core courses offer a mix ofvocabulary-rich materials appropriate for a range ofstudent interests and general academic needs.
Designing the interior ➝ Do-It-Yourself materials
With the framework and structure in place, electricity
and plumbing are installed. It’s then time to consider
the interior design scheme. It’s a big job and one must34

consider whether to tackle it oneself, as a major DoIt-Yourself (DIY) project, or to bring in interior design
professionals.
Why would the planners of a program choose to
design its materials “in-house” over the far easiercourse of adopting commercially published material?
Swales (1980) suggests two varieties of reasons: (a) The
existing published textbooks are lacking in some way,either in designated level, cultural appropriacy, ormatch-up with program goals; (b) language teachingprofessionals’ hubris or self-imposed need for status
demands rejecting off-the-shelf books in favor of material displaying their own homegrown expertise. We
may also add an equally relevant third reason: themarket-driven demands on the institution to promotea “designer-label” course to attract more applicants. As
Nunan (1998) points out, the teaching materials are“the tangible manifestation of the curriculum in action.” Just as it’s the interior design that gives a room
its distinctiveness and usefulness, it’s generally thematerials that provide a language program’s mostdirect effect on the students’ learning.
Whatever the reasons for choosing DIY materials,
once that decision is made at the program level, the inhouse interior design team has committed itself to avery time-consuming, labor-intensive undertaking.
Decisions at each level affect those of each level below,
from syllabus down to unit, lesson and activity.
Decorating the space ➝ Theme selection
Floor plans are rendered and the rooms, fitted withcarpets, wallpaper, and curtains, take on distinctive
styles in keeping with their intended uses.
For an integrated-skills content-based syllabus suchas that of the OUELP core course, a useful organizing
unit is the theme. Within each theme, the topics
themselves can then be allowed to dictate a variety oflanguage input and tasks (Brinton et al., 1989). However, questions of scope and sequence must follow:
What criteria should guide the selection of themes?
What principles should guide the order of themes?
In the OUELP we opt for first-year themes such as
People, Education, Countries, and Global Issues. In thesecond year they are Film Culture, The Sixties, Youth
Culture, and The Information Age. Within this selection,
the order is guided by a loose, though consciously
built-in, conceptual and linguistic grading. In the firstyear, the earlier themes focus on personal experienceand the physical world around the students, and havea relatively low conceptual load, then progress toward
more abstract and issues-based materials which require more linguistically-challenging responses. In
this way, the students move to “higher-levels of language processing (e.g., comparison, distinguishing
fact from opinion) through the variety of text types,
formats, and activities to which they are exposed”(Brinton et al., 1989, p. 15), sharpening both their
linguistic and cognitive processes.
The Language Teacher 24:2

Feature: Gershon
Furnishing the rooms ➝ Theme organization
With the floor, walls, and windows appropriately
covered, one begins to visualize the central living
space fully furnished. In deciding what will go where,
maintaining a sense of unity and practicality become
crucial issues which demand attention.
With appropriate themes in place, the question
arises as to what principles will guide each theme’sconstruction and organization. One considers
theme length, the balance of skills, the flow ofmaterial, the internal cohesion of the material
within the unit, and the desired balance of built-in
consistency and variety.
Balance of skills: Maintaining an appropriate balanceof skills within a theme demands vigilance, particularly within an integrated-skills framework. How muchclassroom time spent on a theme will be devoted tooral skills, to writing and reading? Should the tasks ina theme be sequenced from the least to the mostchallenging? Should the unit template incorporate apre-determined mix of fluency and accuracy tasks?
How varied or uniform should the theme’s activities
be in terms of pace and mode of interaction (group,
pair, individual)? These are all decisions dependent on
a program’s goals and the pedagogical leanings of its
materials design team.
Theme cohesion: Equally significant is the questionof how much internal cohesion a theme should have.
In terms of language processing, vocabulary, and content load, to what extent are the activities arranged so
as to build on each other?
At one extreme, the activities may relate to one
another in such a way that, to complete a given task,
the students must have successfully completed thepreceding ones, forming a kind of task dependency ortask chain. The advantages of a unit that is cohesive inthis way is that the students retain a sense of direction,
being able to clearly see their competencies being built
up along the way. However, one obvious disadvantage
is that it is generally necessary to do the activities in
the fixed order that they appear. More problematic isthat a student having trouble with one activity may
become further and further lost as the theme proceeds
through more challenging activities.
An alternative approach might be called the activity
bank model. Here the activities are independent andautonomous; each one can stand alone and be takenon its own terms, without assuming the content,
vocabulary or grammatical structures of the previous
activity. Though the disadvantage of this task independence may be a lack of clear direction through aunit, the great advantage is flexibility. One can skip
around the activities in a theme more easily, altering
the order to better suit the needs and interests of thelearners. Perhaps a more significant advantage is thatthe students are offered a fresh start each time they
face a new activity—an important consideration with
mixed-level classes. It may also be a good model for
February 2000

highly coordinated programs in which classes proceed
through the same material at equal speed, as it is one
way to give teachers a degree of latitude to follow theirown instincts and interests, if not in the material’scontent, then at least in its order.
In fact, one rarely sees a multiple-lesson unit inwhich the activities are either wholly chained orwholly autonomous. This is certainly true of the
OUELP core course: A three-week, multi-lesson unit
on the theme of Countries, for example, will feature
chained activities, offering a clear, logical flow, andstand-alone activities as well.
Assembling the furniture ➝ Activity construction
Pieces of furniture are assembled and arranged to fit inwith the overall interior style. In considering the design
features of each piece, attractiveness is weighed against
purpose, simplicity, functionality, and sturdiness.
Just as each piece of furniture in a well-appointed
room serves a purpose and fits in with the generalinterior scheme, each activity in a unit benefits fromcertain design features that give it both aesthetic andfunctional value. In keeping with these principles,the materials designers then craft their tasks. In the
OUELP, the design team aims for tasks which display
the features of transparency, do-ability, surrender
value, and robustness.
Transparency: The task type, whether dialogue, information-gap, role-play, or vocabulary exercise,should have an intended outcome that is transparent. Both the learners and the teacher need to know
why they are doing the activity and where it isleading. In OUELP materials, this often means statingon the page the objectives for the activity. Transparency also guides the rubric, heading the activity
toward concise, bulleted instructions, clear contexts,
as in role-plays, and explicit, numbered procedural
steps for longer, more complex tasks.
Do-ability: All of these concerns make an activity
more doable for the students. More importantly
though, is the assurance that they will have the necessary language to complete the task as required—inEnglish. This can only happen when the designers
build into the task the language support the students
will need, both for the topic and for the necessary task
language to negotiate meanings, spellings, requests
for repetition, turn-taking, and group-formation.
Surrender value: Do-ability also involves logistical
simplicity, especially in relation to the surrender valueof an activity, i.e. the functional skills the learner will
acquire from an activity in relation to the time it takes.
In other words, does it produce enough solid language
practice to make it worth the time and energy involved? Building into the core activities a variety ofinteractive groupings is essential. However, our inhouse designers are also encouraged to anticipate
realistically both the time investment and the possible
Gershon, cont’d on p. 39.

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36

The Language Teacher 24:2

インターネットを活用した日本語読解教材の作成方法--学習者個々のレベルやニーズに対応した教材作成-インターネットを活用した日本語読解教材の作成方
北村達也、寺朱美、奥村学、川村よし子
法―学習者個々のレベルやニーズに対応した教材作
成北村達也 et al.

February 2000

37

Feature: Kitamura et al.

38

The Language Teacher 24:2

Feature: Kitamura et al.
Further Reading

Gershon, cont’d from p. 35.

logistical complications that may affect the surrender
value of an activity.
Robustness: Just as a shoddy or flimsy piece of furniture will before long fall apart or be left unused, an
activity without a certain well-proportioned robustness will soon leave students uninterested anddemotivated. This robust quality comes from various
features the design team builds into the activity’s
structure. A well-conceived pre-task lead-in, for example, serves the dual purpose of introducing necessary vocabulary and pricking the students’ interest
and expectations. To this end, quizzes, interviews, andsurveys feature prominently in OUELP materials. Likewise, task follow-ups prompting personalization of
the topic afford the students a real sense of completion. Accountability for information gained about a
topic or a partner in the form of reporting back also
puts students in the authentic position of being able torelay their findings to an interested group. Whatever
the task, its strength, then, comes from the clear senseof its being a well-proportioned whole that allows
students to say they know or can do something meaningful that they didn’t know or couldn’t do before.
Maintenance and Renovation
The house (program) has been fully occupied forsome time, providing the occupants (students) an
attractive, productive space for their needs. Someareas, however, have begun to show signs of wear andtear. Perhaps an additional room (course) is needed.
The new room needs furnishing. Blueprints, hammers, saws, paintbrushes, and wallpaper come out
once again. The work continues . . .
References
Brinton, D., Snow, M., & Wesche, M. (1989). Content-based
second language instruction. Boston: Heinle and Heinle.
Jordan, R. (1997). English for academic purposes: A guide andresource book for teachers. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Lindsay, A. (1997). Designing and riding a camel: Somequestions of balance in a co-ordinated language program,Obirin Review of International Studies 9, 35-102.
Nunan, D. (1988). The learner-centred curriculum. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press
Swales, J. (1980). ESP: The textbook problem. The ESP Journal,
1(1), 11-23.

February 2000

Graves, K. (Ed.). (1996). Teachers as course developers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Jolly, D. & Bolitho, R. (1998). A framework for materials
writing. In B. Tomlinson (Ed.), Materials development inlanguage teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Orr, T. (1998). ESP for Japanese universities: A guide forintelligent reform. The Language Teacher, 22(11), 19-31.
Swales, J. (1995). English for academic purposes. In P. Byrd
(Ed.), Materials writer’s guide. Boston: Heinle and Heinle.
Yalden, J. (1996). Principles of course design for language teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

An Architectural Approach to Curriculum andMaterials Design

MaintenanceandRenovation

Drawing the Blueprints

Building the Framework

Needs: EGP EAP GEAC

Integrated Skills

Designing the Interior
DIY Materials

Assembling the Furniture

Furnishing the Room

Decorating the Space

Activity Construction

Theme Organization

Theme Selection

IFC = inside front cover,
IBC = inside back cover
OBC = outside back coverCambridge University Press ...................................................... 2
EFL Press ................................................................................... 4
IDC ....................................................................................... IBC
Intercom ................................................................................... 44
Macmillan .................................................................... 16, 18, 22
Nellie’s ............................................................................... 28, 32
Oxford University Press ............................................... OBC, 36
Pearson .......................................................................... 6, 10, 12
Seido ........................................................................................ 40
Thomson ............................................................................... IFC

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The Language Teacher 24:2

My Shareedited by sandra j. smith & oishi harumi
Using Songs in Learner-Designed Materials
Brian Cullen, Aichi Prefectural University

Most of the papers in this special issue focus onteacher-developed materials. Another lesser known
but equally successful approach is to involve thelearner in materials development. Involving students
in materials development allows them to gain a greater
understanding of their learning processes and thepedagogical premises underlying teaching materials.
In my classes, an ideal starting point is songs. MoreCDs are sold in Japan than in any other country in theworld and Japan is the largest importer of foreign
music. This is a clear indication that our students findmusic, i.e., English songs, both accessible and enjoyable. But how do we develop learners from consumersof music to developers of song-based materials? Several resource books have shown ways for the teacher toproduce materials (e.g., Murphey 1992, Griffee 1992),
yet these may appear overcomplicated to students.
The best way to encourage learner-designed materials
is by example.
The Procedure
In a yearlong course for one of my university conversation classes, I produce the materials for the firstsemester, and the students produce them for thesecond (see examples below). Students are free to use
their own format, but for a conversation class, using
a gap-fill listening task is suggested as a minimum
core. A gap-fill activity is a simple activity for students
to prepare. Words are deleted at a regular word rate orfor the purpose of focusing on a particular language
point such as grammar, topic-specific vocabulary, or
pronunciation. Because famous songs are used in thistask, another interesting way of song presentation is
to introduce deliberate mistakes into the lyrics. This
manipulation of comprehensible input forces students to negotiate the meaning from context when
doing the task and it also forces them to be creative
when developing the task. (An example of one
student’s parody of a well-known song is given below.) As with most listening activities, students learn
more if they are asked to correct the mistakes before
listening.
If possible, other activities should also be includedin the learner materials. These can include vocabulary
exercises, comprehension exercises, discussion tasks,
and links with other materials, such as a reading.
Songs are an excellent launching pad for discussion
classes as their meaning is often ambiguous. By including a few simple discussion questions on the topic of
the song, learners are amazed at the different interpretations, and the personal nature of music encourages
February 2000

even the most reticent student toexpress opinions freely. An expanded electronic version of theexample below, which includes some of these tasks, isavailable at http://celtic-otter.com/EFL/.
As a musician and songwriter, I sometimes bring toclass materials based on my own songs, and, each year,
at least one or two musically inclined students reciprocate by bringing in songs that their bands havewritten. While teachers occasionally may have tolisten to some dreadful music, students are always
interested in classmates’ compositions. Even for thosestudents who wouldn’t usually play music, a shortsession of songwriting can be fun and a great chance
to use language communicatively, especially if students are paired in “Lennon/McCartney-like” collaborations. Students can compose their own melodies orchange the words of standards. These songs can thenbe incorporated into learner materials for use with thewhole class or in groups.

Using the materials
In many classes, the students, having developed thematerials, are willing and able to take on the role ofteacher and organize and lead the class in the task.
Before introducing the gap-fill activity, students might
give a short presentation about why they chose thesong. In some classes, however, class size or the levelof the students might make it necessary to choose thebest of the student materials for presentations or to
split the class into small groups to ensure that everyone’s
materials are used. This requires one tape recorder pergroup (and lots of noise), or students can provide atape to group members to listen to before class.
Conclusion
Learner-designed materials are an exciting area of
language teaching, and songs in particular offer astrong motivation for students to enter willingly intomaterial design. Moreover, most students will listen toa large number of English songs before deciding on
their final song, thereby introducing them to a rich,authentic source of English which will continue tobring benefits of autonomous learning long after thecourse has finished. Finally, when students develop
their own tasks, they are better able to understandwhat they should grasp from professionally developedmaterials, along with the pedagogical premises underpinning them.
References
Griffee, D. (1992). Songs in Action. Prentice Hall.
Murphey, T. (1992). Music and Song. Oxford: OUP.

41

My Share
Quick Guide
Key Words: Song, Discussion, Learner-developed
Learner English Level: Intermediate and higher
Learner Maturity Level: Sr. High to Adult
Preparation Time: Varies
Activity Time: 20 minutes or more
Teacher-developed Example (mistakes highlighted)
Listening
Find the 13 mistakes in the song. Underline them and thenlisten to check.
Maggie May
Rod Stewart
Wake up Maggie, I think I got something to say to you
It’s late September and I really should be vacuuming
I know I keep you amused, but I feel like Benny Hughes
Oh Maggie, I couldn’t have tried anymore
You led me away from home
Jasco savings you from being alone
You stole my harp and that’s what really hurts
The morning sun when it’s in your face really shows a page
But that don’t worry me not, in my eyes you’re everything
I laughed at Oliver Hokes, my love you didn’t need to coax
Oh Maggie I couldn’t have tried anymore
You led me away from home
Just to save you from being alone
You stole my soul and dirty paint I could do without
All I needed was a friend to lend a gaijin
But you turned into a lover and mother what a lover - youwore me out
All you did was wreck my bed and in the morning kicked mein the head

Oh Maggie, I couldn’t have fried any corn
You led me away from home
’Coz you didn’t want to be alone
You stole my heart—couldn’t leave you if I tried
I suppose I could Collette and Brookes and get on back toschool
Or steal Daddy’s cue—make a living out of playing pool
Or find myself a rotten old man that needs a helping hand
Oh Maggie, I wish I’d never seemed so late
You made a first class fool out of me
But I was blind as a fool can be
You stole my heart but I lob the ball away.
Student-developed example
My WayPaul Anka
And now the end is rear
And so I face the final cartoon
My friends I’ll say it clear
Of which I’m certain
I’ve lived a life that’s fool
I troubled each and every highway
And more, much more than thisI did it my way
Regards I’ve had a few
Ben then again too few to mansion
I did what I had to do
And saw it through without exemption
I planned each chat of course
Each careful step along the byway
And more, much more than thisI did it my away

Which came first, L1 or L2?
Hatayama Hiroaki, Obirin University
It seems quite difficult for Japanese students to masterthe use of articles in English writing. Teaching whether
a noun requires a definite or indefinite article is a little
like the chicken and egg riddle. Which came first, thechicken or the egg? In this case, definite articles precedeboth nouns and we assume that the egg and the chicken
are both defined by each other, making it almost impossible to solve the riddle. But if the indefinite article isreplaced with a definite one—for example, “Whichcame first, the chicken or an egg?”—the egg thenbecomes any egg, an evolutionary order appears, andthe riddle is lost. The same can be said about pluralcountable nouns: Which came first, the chicken or eggs?
Prior to having students count chickens and eggs,
frequency lists may offer one means of creating interest in using definite or indefinite articles. In written
English, the is the most frequent word and a is fourth(McCarthy, 1999, p. 122). If students are given theseodds to work with, they are more aware of the impor42

tance of articles in L2 as well as
more aware that the is used much
more frequently than a. Teachinggrammar, not exactly known as the pachinko of language teaching, then becomes a kind of gambling
guessing game, and, as is well known, gambling isquite popular in Japan.
When teaching English articles to my Japanese
students, I use Japanese texts which are supplied withEnglish translations. The guiding assumption is thatequivalence between the grammars of two languages
facilitates bilingual usage, be it second language learning, lexical borrowing, or code-switching (Milroy &Muysken, 1995, p. 193). Even so, no exact match exists
between categories in different languages. In Japanese,
there isn’t a plural inflection with nouns, indefinite
articles are often not expressed, and the definite article
is functionally replaced with other determiners suchas sono or ano. Irrespective of this, however, by comparing L1 and L2 texts students do recognize anequivalence to their L1 and this is the first step in theprocess of syntactic convergence.
The Language Teacher 24:2

My SharePreparation
Find a text both in Japanese and English. Newspaper
columns are convenient since they are often published in both Japanese and English. The Yomiuri
Shinbun publishes on the Internet in both languages,
and downloading and printing their texts does not
require much time. I recommend using the introductory paragraphs of a story because they usually containthe pertinent information.
After you find your text, create a gap-fill of the
English text, deleting the lexical or grammatical form
you want to highlight.
Example Text
Japanese
大学の発生生物工学を専攻する研究者らが、人間の細胞を牛の未受精卵に移植して細胞融合させ、異種間融合胚（はい）を作製する実験をしていたことが明るみに出た。この研究では、国立の医療機関の研究者も共同研究者になっていた。研究は、細胞融合することで受精卵と同じ状態にし、正常な細胞分裂を実現して、白血病の治療に役立てようという目的があったという。

EnglishIt has been revealed that a group of researchers at
a university created a hybrid embryonic stem
cell by fusing a cell from a cow with one froma human. A researcher from a national medical
institution was also found to have taken part in the
research. According to the scientists, the research
was intended to shed light on the genetic basis ofcell division. The researchers hoped that it would
help in finding the cure for leukemia.
Procedure
1. Briefly explain to students the frequency of a andthe. Then put them into pairs and give each pair acopy of the Japanese and English gap-fill texts.
2. Have students read both texts and compare or
wager how many of the blanks in the English text
are either definite or indefinite articles. You may
want to put each pair’s wager on the board. (For thesake of conciseness, this example shows only the
first paragraph of the newspaper article, and theindefinite articles outnumber the definite ones
nine to five. This goes against the odds in thefrequency list, but in following paragraphs of thearticle more definite articles appear; therefore, if alonger extract had been used, the example would
reflect the odds more accurately. Choose the lengthof your text with this in mind.) Go over the text,
filling in the blanks, as a class. The student in thepair that comes closest to the actual number ofdefinite and indefinite articles wins the wager.
3. Students should also be encouraged to make theirown lists or concordances between L1 and L2. Bylisting all occurrences of articles, learners quickly
notice that only singular countable nouns takeFebruary 2000

articles and that it is a good idea to consider using
an article whenever writing a singular noun. This
technique can also be adapted to almost any othergrammatical or lexical form.
Japanese
1. 研究者ら
2. 大学
3. 異種間融合はい
4. 細胞
5. 牛
6. 人間
7. 研究者
8. 国立の医療機関
9. この研究10. (科学者たち)
11. 研究12. 正常な細胞分裂
13. (研究者達)14. 白血病の治療

Englisha group of researchersa university
a hybrid embryonic stem cella cella cow
a humana researchera national medical institution
the research
the scientists
the research
the genetic basis of cell division
the researchersa cure for leukemia

Occurrences one through eight are all indefinite articles while occurrences nine through thirteen are all
definite. This illustrates another approach to teachingarticles, namely, that initial occurrences of singularnouns require indefinite articles and following occurrences of the same noun require definite articles (e.g.,
initial A group of researchers, replaced by the researchers)or are replaced with pronouns, determiners or synonyms (e.g., initial a cell, replaced by one).
Conclusion
Grammar translation remains a dominant methodology in many English classrooms in Japan. Comparing
L1 and L2 texts increases student recognition of the L2,
and many Japanese words are almost directly translatable into English. Presenting introductory corpus analysis techniques and frequency lists of words in an interesting
way helps students to internalize and control new grammatical and lexical forms while also providing lesson
content for native speaker English teachers who may
not be comfortable enough with their Japanese ability
to compare L1 and L2 texts in the classroom.
References
Daily Yomiuri. (English text) yomiuri.co.jp/main/main-e.htm(Japanese text) yomiuri.co.jp/index-j.htm
McCarthy, Michael. (1999). Spoken Language & Applied Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Milroy, L. and P. Muysken. (1995). One Speaker, Two Languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Quick Guide
Key Words: Bilingual, Concordance, Corpus analysis
Learner English Level: Low intermediate and higher
Learner Maturity Level: High school and older
Preparation Time: One hour
Activity Time: One ninety-minute class

43

44

The Language Teacher 24:2

Departments
Book Reviewsedited by katharine isbell & oda masaki
Materials Development in Language Teaching. BrianTomlinson, Ed., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1998. £13.95 GBP. pp. xiv + 368. ISBN: 0-521-57419-6.
For teachers who are interested in writing materials or
understanding issues related to materials development, it is easy to recommend this book. Some of thepapers in this special issue of The Language Teacher cite
this work and for good reason. It may be the mostcomprehensive book on materials development available at the moment. The introduction states that “allthe chapters in this book concentrate on the two vitalquestions of what should be given to the learners andwhat can be done with it to promote language learning” (p. 2). This genuine commitment of the editor
and the contributors to develop materials that promote language learning is impressive.
It is immediately apparent that Materials Development in Language Teaching is well organized. A glossaryof basic terms for materials development and an introduction that clarifies concepts which are frequently
encountered in the book precede four fairly equal
sections: Data Collection and Materials Development,
The Process of Materials Writing, The Process of Materials Evaluation, and Ideas for Materials Development.
Each section contains a few chapters by mostly prominent contributors from a wide range of professions,
including classroom teachers, researchers, textbook
writers, lecturers, and publishers. Summative comments by the editor, which can serve to refresh one’s
memory of a particular topic, append each section.
Tomlinson provides open-ended and flexible working definitions of terms in the glossary. For example,
language learning materials can extend beyond thecoursebook to include a video, a handout, a newspaper,a cassette, and even “a paragraph written on thewhiteboard.” In his view, materials encompass “anything which is deliberately used to increase the learners’
knowledge and/or experience of language” (p. 2). Thus,
in a real sense, all teachers are materials developers.
Although second language acquisition (SLA) research
has not yet been able to provide absolute or definitive
conclusions, Tomlinson argues that this should not
deter teachers from applying what is known about SLA
to the development of effective materials.
By taking a holistic approach, the book is ambitious in its
attempt to unify the various domains, such as research,
writing, and teaching, that make up the field of second
language learning. He seeks to identify and promote a setof guiding principles for materials developers, primarily acompilation of learning principles and procedures whichmost teachers agree contribute to successful learning plus
a compilation of principles and procedures recommended by most SLA researchers. A marriage of the two
February 2000

compilations could produce a list of principles andprocedures which could provide a menu of potentially
profitable options for materials developers (p. 6).
The list of learner-centered guiding principles that
follows takes into consideration a wide range of affective, cognitive, and linguistic factors towards the goalof creating effective materials.
Borrowing from other branches of learning such asneuro-scientific research, Tomlinson suggests several
innovative, if unconventional, ideas: for example, thenotion that language learners benefit from materials
that are experiential or kinesthetic, rather than analytic and visual (the realm of most textbooks). He also
proposes that there should be a silent period at the
beginning of a lesson.
The work is clearly learner-centered (“It is importantto remember that the learner is always inBook Reviews
charge” [p. 12]), yet any potential pitfalls of this approach are balanced in the section on materials evaluation where Tomlinson states that “it is not necessarily
enough that the learners enjoy and value the materials”(p. 3). He strongly recommends that long-term studiesof evaluations of materials be employed and that thefocus of these evaluations be on what the learners in fact
do with the materials and what they are really learning.
This is a comprehensive book that clearly outlines
what is involved with publishing credible materials.
One possible problem readers may have is its attempt
to unite widely accepted teaching methodology suchas applying SLA research with less widely accepted
approaches such as Suggestopedia. Nonetheless, it isadmirable in its intent to unify a variety of elements aswell as the perspectives of the contributors, and,
finally, to encourage cooperation among materials
writers towards the goal of writing valuable materials.
Reviewed by Audrey Morrell, Obirin University
SLA Research and Language Teaching. Rod Ellis.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. pp. viii + 280.
¥5,730. ISBN: 0-19-4372154.
Rod Ellis has written more than once that Noam
Chomksy, the linguist, does not write with language
teachers in mind. With SLA Research and Language
Teaching, Ellis attempts to correct this oversight by
writing specifically for language teachers. The publication goes a long way in bridging that gap between thework of second language acquisition (SLA) researchers
and the work of classroom teachers. Ellis, an applied
linguist himself, suggests that it is the applied linguist’s
responsibility to act as an intermediary between thetechnical knowledge generated by the researcher andthe practical knowledge generated by the teacher.
The book is divided into six parts, some of which werepreviously published. Each part might be thought of as astage in the process of inducting and orienting the reader
to the concept of teachers as researchers and the classroom as a place of research. Part two, Making Research
45

Book Reviews
Accessible, makes research on form-focused instructionaccessible to teachers and investigates what kind ofgrammar instruction works best. Of particular interest
to SLA theory are the terms feature-focused activity andfocused communication activity which aptly paraphraseLong’s (1988) often quoted, and just as often misunderstood, terms focus on forms and focus on form, respectively.
The third part on the application of theory has threelevels: (1) a theory of instructed SLA, (2) the structural
syllabus and SLA, and (3) acquisition-compatible tasks.
The first level outlines a theory of SLA. The second
level applies the theory at the syllabus level. It addresses the problem of how a syllabus can be selected
and graded in a way that is compatible with thelearner’s ability to learn. The structural syllabus, which
proceeds from easy to difficult grammar forms andlexical items and remains one of the dominant
pedagogies in the world, serves as the device to accomplish this, despite the existence of more discoverybased, yet less structured, communicative syllabuses.
The third level describes and illustrates interpretationand consciousness-raising (CR) tasks by drawing on
psycholinguistic rationale.
In the next part, a method in which SLA can informpedagogy through classroom-centred, context-specificresearch is introduced. The development of one
illocutionary act, requests, and the relationship that
thereby arises with opportunities for oral productionin the classroom are presented in a context to persuadeteachers to become critical readers of research reports.
The part entitled The Teacher as Researcher provides
two case studies of teachers conducting context-specific empirical research. They explain ways in whichteachers can conduct either their own action researchor micro-evaluations of tasks. The action researchstudy deals with internalization of new forms, control
over forms already internalized, and learner improvement of their output. The micro-evaluation study
proposes that more thought should be given to howteachers can evaluate the materials retrospectively
that they use on a day-by-day basis.
More communication between researchers andteachers and greater cooperation between the academic and practical domains of SLA is needed. To help
address these problems, Ellis concludes that teachers
and researchers should work together investigating
pedagogical problems, and applied linguists should
not promulgate what teachers teach, but encourage
understanding and experimentation. Research needs
to mirror the classroom in diversity, and researchers
need to be more conscious of teachers’ needs.
Overall Ellis’ investigation of the relationship between research and teaching is informative and refreshingly practical. While Chomsky may not be thebest source for teachers wanting to know how they canaccess SLA research and apply it to their classrooms,
this book certainly is.
Reviewed by Andrew Reimann, Nihon University
46

References
Long, M. (1988). Instructed interlanguage development. In
Issues in Second Language Acquisition: Multiple Perspectives.
New York: Newbury House.

Spoken Language & Applied Linguistics. Michael
McCarthy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1998. pp. viii + 206. ¥4,530 ISBN: 0-521-59769-2.
In Spoken Language & Applied Linguistics, McCarthy
draws upon ten years of study into the spoken language which is based primarily on qualitative analysis
of corpus data gathered from the Cambridge andNottingham Corpus of Discourse in English(CANCODE) project. While several of the chapters arepreviously published papers (1988-1996), many arenew, unpublished chapters that discern how speaker
orientation can be applied to language teaching. Eachof the eight chapters analyses numerous authentic
spoken extracts such as the following:[at a dinner table, <S 02> is the guest]:<S 01> D’you want some olive oil Dennis?
<S 02> Mm ta. (p. 54)
In the first chapter, the difficulties of creating andmaintaining the CANCODE corpus project are explained in relation to genre, discourse, and conversational analysis. Essentially, CANCODE’s fivemillion-word size is relatively small by today’s standards. Nonetheless, the real value of the corpus isbetter understood not by its size but by considering thecomplexity in recording and transcribing authentic
spoken language. With this perspective in mind,
CANCODE was designed to be of maximum use toteachers, pedagogically-oriented researchers, andmaterials writers. Using computer-generated corpora
to develop spoken grammars may be relatively new,but spoken grammars are not.
The second chapter focuses on theories of speech
genre, and the importance of Bakhtin’s (1986) “Speech
Genres and Other Late Essays” merits special mention
from McCarthy. Four spoken extracts are analysed,
and generic similarities between them are presented as
being patterned. The following chapter, appropriately
entitled What Should We Teach about the Spoken
Language?, analyses more discourse and conversational analysis structural units according to theirteachability. It concludes with a previously publishedarticle on the Three I’s (Illustration-Interaction-Induction) approach. McCarthy argues that if the Three I’s
methodology were used in conjunction with a syllabus which incorporates appropriate discourse-sensitive language components, then a more rapid
acquisition of fluency and naturalistic conversation
skills would result.
Chapters 4 and 5 deal with grammar. Spoken data ischosen to substantiate the claim that certain aspects ofgrammar are best understood when examined in the
The Language Teacher 24:2

Book Reviews/Bulletin Board
context that they take place, for example, it and thisand that. It usually occurs initially in speech and thenrepeating occurrences of the pronoun change to either
this or that, a functional relationship similar to that of
the indefinite and definite articles. Using a conceptual
framework built on the work of the late Eugene Winter, the fifth chapter looks at how sequences of verb
tense choices work in synergy with the context of
spoken discourses to create further textual-grammatical patterning.
Chapters 6 and 7 shift the focus to vocabulary.
Idioms are evaluated in the context of everyday stories
and anecdotes, and the data indicates that idiom
selection is not random. It is put forth that storytellingis normally a collaborative enterprise, and listeners
have the right to evaluate the events, especially at theend of the story. The use of idioms is one way of doing
this because they also ensure a smooth passage for allparticipants from story world back to conversationworld.
In the last chapter, analysis confirms the commonsense intuition that speech reporting is exceedingly
common in everyday language, but spoken data also
exhibit choices which are rarely, if ever, found in
written-text reports. In contrast, literary reporting
verbs such as exclaimed or answered are found to be
used almost exclusively in written texts.
A common criticism of this book might be the lackof North American spoken discourse. However, thestrength of the book lies in McCarthy’s passionate
desire to understand the essence of language. Hispassion is infectious, and through it the value ofacquiring and using authentic spoken discourse in theclassroom is realized. This book is part of a paradigm
shift in language teaching and I highly recommend it.
Reviewed by Kevin Knight, Kanda Gaigo Career College
References
Bakhtin, M. (1986). Speech genres and other late essays. In C.
Emerson & M. Holquist (Eds.). Speech genres and other lateessays. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.

Recently Received
compiled by angela ota
The following items are available for review. Overseas reviewers are welcome. Reviewers of all classroom related books
must test the materials in the classroom. An asterisk indicatesfirst notice. An exclamation mark indicates third and final
notice. All final notice items will be discarded after the 29thof February. Please contact Publishers’ Reviews Copies Liaison. Materials will be held for two weeks before being sent toreviewers and when requested by more than one reviewer
will go to the reviewer with the most expertise in the field.
Please make reference to qualifications when requestingmaterials. Publishers should send all materials for review,
both for students (text and all peripherals) and for teachers,
to Publishers’ Reviews Copies Liaison.
February 2000

For Students
Course Books*Broadway, D. et al. (1994). Situational English. Tokyo: Nichibei—Nan’un-do.
*Gitsaki, C., & Taylor, R. (2000). Internet English: WWW-based
communication activities. (student’s, teacher’s). New York:
Oxford University Press.
*Lee, L., Yoshida, K., & Ziolkowski. (2000). J-Talk: Conversation across cultures (student’s, CD, teacher’s). New York:
Oxford University Press.
*Shapiro, N., & Adelson-Goldstein, J. (1998). The Oxford
picture dictionary (monolingual, English-Japanese, Teacher’s,
Beginning Workbook, Intermediate Workbook, cassette).
New York: Oxford University Press.
English for Specific Purposes!Lee, D., Hall, C., & Hurley, M. (1991). American legal English:
Using languages in legal contexts. Ann Arbor: University ofMichigan Press.
CultureDougill, J. (1999). Culture through movies. Tokyo: Eichosha.
*Shaules, J., & Katsura, H. (1998). Culture riddles—America:
Solving dilemmas in intercultural communication. Tokyo:
Nan’un-do.
Supplementary Materials*Biber, D., Johansson, S., Leech, G., Conrad, S., & Finegan, E.
(1999). Longman grammar of spoken and written English.
Harlow: Pearson Education Limited.

For Teachers!Leonard, T. (with translation by 須藤詩子 [Sudo Utako])(1999). East meets west: Problems and solutions: Understanding misunderstandings between JTEs and ALTs. Tokyo:
Taishukan Shoten.
*Brown, D. (1994). (3rd ed.). Principles of language learning andteaching. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall Regents.

Bulletin Board
edited by david dycus and kinugawa takao
Contributors to the Bulletin Board are requested by thecolumn editor to submit announcements written in a paragraph format and not in abbreviated or outline form.

Final Call for Papers and Call for Participation:
JALTCALL2000 Conference—The annual national
conference of the Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL) SIG, JALTCALL2000: “Directions and
Debates at the New Millennium,” will be held at
Tokyo University of Technology from June 9 to June
12, 2000. The deadline for (online) papers is February
29, 2000. All members and nonmembers are welcome. All levels of computer skill are catered for.
Both English and Japanese sessions are planned. The
main event is from June 10 (Sat) to June 11 (Sun) withextra activities planned for June 9 (Fri) and June 12(Mon). Hands-on sessions, practical tips, theoretical47

Bulletin Board
debate, excellent networking, and CALL materials
will be on show—all at a beautiful campus andJapan’s most state-of-the-art facility. For more details in both English and Japanese, see website: http://jaltcall.org/conferences/call2000/.
投稿・参加者募集: JALTCALL2000 Conference—コンピュータ利
用語学学習(CALL) SIGの年次大会、JALTCALL2000「新しいミレニアムにおける方向性とディベート」が2 0 0 0 年6 月9〜1 2 日に東京工業大学にて開催されます。投稿の締め切りは2000年2月29
日です。会員、非会員を問わず歓迎いたします。全てのレベルのコンピュータスキルについても提供することができます。英語と日本語両言語によるセッションを予定しています。詳細は英文をご参照ください。

Call for Participation: CUE Mini-Conference—The
CUE SIG will hold a mini-conference at Keisen University, Tama Center, Tokyo on Saturday, May 20
and Sunday, May 21, 2000. Its theme is: “Content
and Foreign Language Education: Looking at the
Future.” Proposals are invited for presentations, poster
sessions, workshops, roundtables, and demonstrations on the theme of content-centered language
learning including content- and theme-based education, sheltered learning, and content classes taught
in the learner’s second language, with possible connections to skill-based learning and the learning of
foreign languages for specificpurposes (e.g. ESP). Contact
CUE Programme Chair: Eamon
McCafferty; eamon@gol.com.
Details available at: http://
www.wilde.org/cue/conferences/content.html. Online
submission is available at http://www.wild-e.org/cue/conferences/submissions.html. The
deadline for submissions is February 29, 2000.
参加者募集: CUE Mini-Conference—大学外国語教育(CUE) Sigは、
2000年5月20日（土）〜21日（日）に、恵泉女学園大学(東京多摩センター)において、Mini-Conferenceを開催いたします。テーマ
は「コンテントと外国語教育：Looking at the future」です。内容・テーマ中心の教育、保護学習、学習者の第二言語で教授される内容クラス、E S P などの技能中心の外国語学習など内容中心の言語学習のテーマについての発表、ポスターセッション、ワーク
ショップ、ラウンドテーブルとデモンストレーションを歓迎いたします。詳細は英文をご参照ください。

Call for Papers: JALT Hokkaido 17th Annual Language Conference—The JALT Hokkaido 17th Annual Language Conference will be held in Sapporo
on Saturday and Sunday, June 10-11, 2000. The
Hokkaido Chapter invites you to submit papers, inEnglish or Japanese, on any aspect of language teaching in Japan. Presentation blocks will be 45 minutes
and all equipment needs must be specified. If you
have a preference for presenting on Saturday or
Sunday, please indicate. Please check with the JALT
Hokkaido homepage http://www2.crosswinds.net/~hyrejalthokkaido/JALTPage/ for detailed format48

ting instructions of the abstract, name, contact information, title, and biographical data. Japanese
papers should have an English summary attached. If
possible, English papers should have a Japanesesummary attached. The deadline for submitting papers is March 1, 2000. All abstracts must be submitted by email to Don Hinkelman, Conference Program
Chair; hinkel@sgu.ac.jp.
投稿募集: JALT北海道第17回年次大会—JALT北海道第17回年次大会が2000年6月10日(土)〜11日（日）に札幌で開催されます。北海道支部では日本における言語教授のあらゆる側面に関する英語、又は日本語の論文を募集いたします。発表は4 5 分で使用機材
は事前に指定する必要があります。発表の曜日の希望がある場合には明記して下さい。要旨に関する詳細は、J A L T H o k k a i d ohomepage <http://www2.crosswinds.net/˜hyrejalthokkaido/
JALTPage/>をご覧下さい。日本語論文は英語要旨を添付してください。もし可能なら英語論文も日本語要旨を添付してください。提出先、詳細は英文の連絡先をご参照ください。

The Language Teacher Staff Recruitment—The Language Teacher needs English language proofreaders
immediately. Qualified applicants will be JALT members with language teaching experience, Japanese
residency, a fax, email, and a computer that canprocess Macintosh files. The position will require
several hours of concentrated work every month,listserv subscription, and occasional online and face-to-facemeetings. If more qualified candidates apply than we can accept, we will consider them inorder as further vacancies appear. The supervised apprenticeprogram of The Language Teacher
trains proofreaders in TLT style,format, and operations. Apprentices begin by shadowing experienced proofreaders, rotatingfrom section to section of the magazine until they
become familiar with TLT’s operations as a whole.
They then assume proofreading tasks themselves.
Consequently, when annual or occasional staff vacancies arise, the best qualified candidates tend to comefrom current staff, and the result is often a successionof vacancies filled and created in turn. As a rule, TLT
recruits publicly for proofreaders and translators only,
giving senior proofreaders and translators first priority
as other staff positions become vacant. Please submit
a curriculum vitae and cover letter to William Acton;
JALT Publications Board Chair; Nagaikegami 6410-1,
Hirako-cho, Owariasahi-shi, Aichi-ken 488-0872;
i44993g@nucc.cc.nagoya-u.ac.jp.
TLTスタッフ校正担当者募集—TLTでは、英語の校正担当者を募集しております。資格は言語教育経験を持つJ A L T メンバーで、日本に在住し、ファックス、電子メール、および、Macintosh fileを加工することができるコンピューターを持っていることです。担
当者は、毎月数時間を校正作業やオンラインやオフラインの会議のため時間を使うことになります。詳細に関しては、英文をご参照ください。

The Language Teacher 24:2

SIG News

Special Interest Group
News研究部会ニュース
edited by robert long
Interested in learning more about your SIG? Please feel
free contact the coordinators listed after this column.
ご自分の部会の活動等についてお知りになりたい場合にはコラム
後に掲載のコーディネーターまでご連絡ください。

Please note that a new special interest group (SIG)
relating to cross-cultural behavior, intercultural communication and its impact on language learning is
now being discussed. This SIG could not only be an
opportunity for sharing academic research and professional development with each other but also could
serve to boost cooperative ties between sister associations that currently do not reach the 3000 teachers
who make up JALT. If you are interested in volunteering, please contact David Brooks at Kitasato University, 1-15-1 Kitasato, Sagamihara, Kanagawa, 228-8555;
t: 042-778-8052(w); f: 042-778-9233.
異文化における行動や異文化間コミュニケーション、そしてそれらが語学学習に及ぼす影響等に関連した研究部会の創設が現在検討されております。参加に興味のある方は、David Brooks（連絡先は英文参照）までご連絡ください。

Material Writers—If you have enjoyed this month’s
issue of The Language Teacher, the MW SIG invites
you to vote with your wallet and join us. We arededicated to the continual improvement of language teaching materials. For a trial copy of ouroutstanding newsletter, Between the Keys, please contact the incoming newsletter editor, Chris Weaver,at ctw@wa2.so-net.ne.jp.
今月号のT L T を楽しんでいただけたのでしたら、語学指導教材の改善に取り組む、教材開発部会への参加お勧めいたします。当部会会報「Between the Keys」の見本をご希望の方は、新編集長
Chris Weaver（連絡先は英文参照）まで。

GALE—2000 GALE Symposium and Retreat Call for
Proposals. June 24-25 (Sat-Sun), Hiroshima City.
Let’s share our insights, research and inspiration in
the relaxing setting of a hotspring hotel. Suggested
presentation themes include the construction ofgender in EFL classrooms, the inclusion (and exclusion) of alternative sexual orientations in EFL curriculum, and the contribution feminist andmasculinist theories can make to content courses
and EFL pedagogy. Send proposals online or by post
(both disk and hard copies) to the GALE Co-Program
Chair, Simon Cole, at saimon@cec.mii.kurumeu.ac.jp; Language Education Institute, Kurume University, 1635 Mii-machi, Kurume-shi, Fukuoka-ken,
839-085; f: 0942-434797; t: 0942-434411 ext 664.
Please check out our homepage at http://
www2.gol.com/users/ath/gale/
6月24日、25両日に、広島市においてGALEシンポジウム及び合宿を開催します。

February 2000

Teacher Education—April 22-23, 2000 there is a twoday Action Research Retreat, on the theme of “Teacher
Autonomy, Learner Autonomy.” The weekend includes Andy Curtis, from Hong Kong Polytechnic
University, leading 4 workshops, with plenty of time
for networking and collaboration. The retreat will beheld north of Tokyo at British Hills, near the Shin
Shirakawa Shinkansen stop. For more information,
contact Lois Scott-Conley, lsc@cheerful.com; t: 042796-1145.
4 月2 2 日、2 3 日の両日、「教師の自立、学習者の自立」をテーマにアクション・リサーチ会合を東北新幹線新白河駅近くのB r i t ish Hills にて開催します。

SIG Coordinators, please send your reports by email tolong@dhs.kyutech.ac.jp or by fax: 093-884-3447. Thank you.

SIG Contact Information
Bilingualism—Peter Gray; t/f: 011-897-9891(h);pag@sapporo.email.ne.jp
Computer-Assisted Language Learning—Elin
Melchior; t: 0568-75-0136(h) 0568-76-0905(w);elin@gol.com
College and University Educators—Alan Mackenzie;t/f: 03-3757-7008(h); asm@typhoon.co.jp
Global Issues in Language Education—Kip A. Cates;t/f: 0857-31-5650 (w); kcates@fed.tottori-u.ac.jp
Japanese as a Second Language—Stacey Tarvin
Isomura; stacey@gol.com
Junior and Senior High School—Barry Mateer; t: 044933-8588(h); barrym@gol.com
Learner Development—Hugh Nicoll; t: 0985-204788(w); f: 0985-20-4807(w); hnicoll@miyazakimu.ac.jp
Material Writers—James Swan; t/f: 0742-41-9576(w);swan@daibutsu.nara-u.ac.jp
Professionalism, Administration, and Leadership in
Education—Edward Haig; f: 052-805-3875(w);haig@nagoya-wu.ac.jp
Teaching Children—Aleda Krause; t: 048-776-0392;
f: 048-776-7952; aleda@gol.com (English);elnishi@gol.com (Japanese)
Teacher Education—Lois Scott-Conley; lois.scottconley@sit.edu
Testing and Evaluation—Leo Yoffe; t/f: 027-2338696(h); lyoffe@edu.gunma-u.ac.jp
Video—Daniel Walsh; t: 0722-99-5127(h);walsh@hagoromo.ac.jp

Affiliate SIGs
Foreign Language Literacy—Charles Jannuzi;
t/f: 0776-27-7102(h); jannuzi@ThePentagon.com;
januzzi@edu00.f-edu.fukui-u.ac.jp
Other Language Educators—Rudolf Reinelt; t/f: 089927-6293(h); reinelt@ll.ehime-u.ac.jp
Gender Awareness in Language Education—Cheiron
McMahill; t: 81-270-65-8511(w); f: 81-270-659538(w); cheiron@gpwu.ac.jp

49

SIG Contacts/Chapter Reports
Forming SIGs
Pragmatics—Yuri Kite; ykite@gol.com; Eaton
Churchill; PXQ00514@nifty.ne.jp
Applied Linguistics—Thom Simmons; t/f: 045-8458242; malang@gol.com

Chapter Reports
edited by diane pelyk
Gunma: November 1999—Researching Via theInternet by Harashima Hideto and Sean Reedy. Theeyes of participants shifted quickly between theirpersonal monitors and the projection of Harashima
as he guided us swiftly through the informationpacked links of his website. Even for those of us
knowledgeable about the Internet, there was muchto be learned on how to help our students search for
information and how EFL/ESL teachers can find data
for their research on the web. The path of ourjourney took us from search engines to virtual libraries, research organizations, online bookstores, databases, archives, and finally concordances and corpus
finders. All subject areas are linked directly to theresource sites and are indispensable for any teacher.
Harashima is generously willing to share his workwith all JALT members. Why don’t you see foryourself at http://www.maebashi-it.ac.jp/hideto/research?
In the second half, Sean Reedy gave each participant
one of five different worksheets which required us tosearch for the information to answer questions such as“I want to study in Ireland. What are some universities
I can apply to, and what are their requirements?” and“What percentage of Irish people speak Irish (Gaelic)as their native tongue?” On the grid, we were to write
the search engine path, the web addresses, and our
results. The search left some feeling triumphant andothers frustrated after having hit stumbling blocks.
This experience made us realize that the Internet canbe a powerful and resourceful tool, yet finding theinformation we need requires a lot of skill and sometimes a bit of luck.
Reported by Renee Gauthier Sawazaki
Kitakyushu: September 1999—Which Learning Style
Are You? by Jane Hoelker. An old adage suggests thatpeople are interested first in themselves, next inother people, then in things, and finally in ideas.
This may explain why Jane Hoelker had the rapt
attention of her audience when she told them that
she was going to talk about their personal learning
styles. She suggested that not only teachers, but also
students have different learning styles and challenged us to make teaching more efficient and accel50

erate learning by teaching to all four learning styles,
which could result in a 90% retention rate. The
presenter gave the audience a learning-style test.
Participants had to answer questions and ranked
themselves in one of four learning styles, CE (Concrete Experiential), RO (Reflective Observation), AC(Abstract Conceptualization), and AE (Active Experimentation).
Next, Hoelker placed the participants into groups
according to their learning style and had them makea poster representing “the good teacher.” Then,discussion results were shared with the entire audience. Consensus within each of the four style groups
was reached. However, when those results wereshared with the large class group, members were
surprised at the different contents of the posters.
Some groups prioritized accuracy, while others ranked
flexibility as high on their list. The audience concluded that even though every teacher tries to be thebest he or she can be, they are clearly influenced bytheir personal learning style, thereby unwittingly
ignoring the learning styles of the students. As eachlearning style has its strengths and weaknesses, teachers want to give each one a chance in the classroom.
Then all students can reach full development.
Reported by L. Dennis Woolbright
Kobe: September 1999—Speech and Debate byCharles LeBeau. Charles LeBeau gave a hands-on
workshop wherein participants could go through aseries of steps for planning, presenting, and evaluating debates and speeches.
LeBeau showed us how to break down speech
making into manageable steps, such as structure,body language, eye contact, and delivery. In thisway, students, including those at a low level, cangradually improve their speaking skills and understand what they are doing. He emphasized thatstudents need a clear model of good techniques thatthey can learn through a series of exercises.
In both debate and speech making, students need
to use critical thinking skills to be effective. The
presenter provided a series of worksheets that could
be used to build a convincing presentation.
Reported by Rebecca Calman
Miyazaki: September 1999—Survival Language
Training: Some Peace Corps Insights by William
Perry. The presenter began by outlining the goals
and methods of the United States Peace Corps language-training program. Perry himself served as anadministrator and program training officer for four
years in the ex-Soviet republic of Kazakhstan, besides
his over twenty years of experience in various aspectsof Peace Corps work.
First Perry informed listeners of the role and function of the Peace Corps. The importance of creating
sustainable development in recipient countries wasemphasized, with the ultimate goal of enablingother countries to learn how to help themselves.
The Language Teacher 24:2

Chapter Reports/Chapter Meetings
Perry then provided samples of the language-training materials that are used to immerse the volunteers
into the local cultures. Success and failures wererecounted in achieving the ultimate goal of creating
a mutual understanding between the American
people and the countries served.
Reported by Mike Guest

Chapter Meetingsedited by tom merner
February is a busy month with Chapters in the Kyushu region
holding a Distinguished Lecture Tour and the Kansai Region
Chapters hosting a book fair, along with other Chapters andtheir monthly events. For further details contact the Chapter
officers listed in the Chapter Contacts list below.
今月は、各支部の月例会合に加えて、九州において著名講演者ツアー、関西地域支部共催の教材展が開催されます。詳細について
は、コラム後に掲載されている各支部担当者にお問い合わせください。

Kyushu Region—Distinguished Lecture Circuit: The
Kyushu Roadshow 2000.
Speakers: 1) Laura MacGregor, Sophia University,
teacher, author, former TLT editor; 2) Jill Robbins,
Kwansei Gakuin University, author, JALT99 Conference Chair. (Sponsorship for Laura MacGregor generously provided by MacMillan Languagehouse)
Back by popular demand, the Kyushu Roadshow
gears up for the next millennium, welcoming Laura
MacGregor, author of Pathfinder. Accompanying Lauraon two tour stops is Jill Robbins, author of The Learning
Strategies Handbook. Further description of presenters
and topics at http://kyushu.com/jalt/feb.html.
Presentation descriptions are as follows:
Topic 1: “Seven Extension Activities That Work”(MacGregor). Vocabulary building, grammar practice, listening and speaking practice are essential inforeign language learning. Teachers can help students build communicative competence with sevenextension activities.
Topic 2: “The STEP Interview Test” (MacGregor).
Since its inception in 1964, STEP (The Society for
Testing English Proficiency) has operated in secrecy.
This presentation explores 1) test preparation, 2) test
contents, and 3) test evaluation. Finally, information will be shared on how teachers can help prepare
their students for success on the STEP interview tests.
Topic 3: “The Preschool Experience in Japan”(MacGregor). By examining the approaches and attitudes toward teaching, learning, and socialization
training at the preschool level, college teachers canbetter understand their students’ language learningneeds and cultural expectations. The presenter willreport her observations, analyses, and recommendaFebruary 2000

tions based on a two-year research project at apreschool in Sapporo.
Topic 4: “Learning Strategies Instruction in Japan”(Robbins). Adaptation of the Cognitive Academic
Language Learning Approach (CALLA) to the Japanese language-learning context. Presentation includes think-aloud protocol to investigate learning
processes and creation of a lesson plan adapting aproblem-solving process model to the language levels, backgrounds, and goals of Japanese learners.
Schedules for these events are as follows:
Kagoshima Chapter—MacGregor, Topics 1 & 2.
Sunday February 13, 14:00-16:00; Iris Kyuden Plaza(I’m Bldg.) 2F; one-day members 500 yen.
Miyazaki Chapter—MacGregor, Topics 1 & 2. Tuesday February 15, 18:00-20:00; Miyazaki Int’l College,
Rm. 2-307; one-day members 750 yen.
Kumamoto Chapter (1)—MacGregor, Topics 1 & 3.
Thursday February 17, 19:00-21:00; Kumamoto Gakuen
U.; free for all.
Kitakyushu Chapter—MacGregor, Topics 1 & 3.
Saturday February 19, 19:00-21:00; Int’l Conf. Center
3F; one-day members 500 yen.
Kumamoto Chapter (2)—Robbins, Topic 4. Saturday
February 19, 19:00-21:00; location TBA; free for all.
Fukuoka Chapter—Grand Slam Double Header!
MacGregor & Robbins, Topics 1, 3 & 4. Sunday
February 20, 13:00-17:00; Aso Foreign Language Travel
College; one-day members 1000 yen.

Other Chapters
Hiroshima—How to Make and Use a Good Multimedia Room by Joe Lauer. Saturday February 5; Hiroshima
University; free for all.
Hokkaido—There is a meeting scheduled to be held.
Members will be informed of the title, date, andtime. For more details contact the JALT Hokkaido
Office; t/f: 011-584-7588; www.crosswinds.net/~hyrejalthokkaido/JALTPage/.
Ibaraki—Richard Walker, Pearson Education Publishing Company, will present the latest in video andgraded reading materials from Pearson Education.
Sunday February 20, 13:30-17:00; Ibaraki-ken Kennan
Shogai Gakushu Center, Tsuichiura; one-day members
500 yen.
Kanazawa—Some Tips on How to Motivate SlowLearners at High Schools by Eda Harumi and
Kawahara Toshiaki. Due to a lack of motivation,
there are many slow learners at high schools. Current textbooks discourage students from studying
because there are too many abstract and unfamiliar
words in them. As a remedy for this situation, two
methods will be suggested: 1) applying children’s
English materials for slow learners, and 2) making
use of picture books during classroom activities.
Sunday February 20; Shakai Kyoiku Center (3-2-15
Honda-machi, Kanazawa); one-day members 600 yen.
51

Chapter Meetings
Kitakyushu—Teaching Three Minute Speeches Dennis Woolbright, Seinan Women’s Junior College.
This presentation will cover the details of helping
students prepare and rehearse their speeches forspeech contests and classes. Saturday February 12,
19:00-21:00; Kitakyushu International Conference Center, room 31; one-day members 500 yen.
スピーチコンテストやクラスのために、学生が自身のスピーチを準備し、練習するのに役立つノウハウについての発表です。

Kobe—The Third Kansai Book Fair and Mini-Conference cosponsored by Kobe, Osaka, Kyoto, Himeji,
and Nara Chapters. Sunday February 6, 10:00-16:00;
Kobe YMCA. For more information contact Ludlow
Gibbons; t: 06-6358-6938; ludlow@mbox.inetosaka.or.jp.
Nagasaki—Motivating Japanese Children to be Active
Learners by David Paul, David English House. Bynurturing and strengthening elementary school
children’s natural curiosity and presenting structures
through student-initiated activities, we can train children to be active learners who are capable of speaking,reading, and writing English at a high level. Many
ideas for games and songs which work with children,and learning reading and writing through a simplified
approach to phonics will be introduced. Sunday February 13, 13:30-16.30; Nagasaki Shimin Kaikan; one-day
members 1000 yen, students 500 yen.
Nagoya—Nice Talking With You: Conversation Strategy Focus by Tom Kenny, Nagoya University ofForeign Studies. False beginners, who often lack theability to bring their great knowledge of vocabulary
and grammar into real conversation, need lexicalphrases that help them keep conversations moving.
The presenter will show how his new textbook Nice
Talking With You moves such conversation strategies
to the forefront of instruction, and provides listening and speaking activities to help learners internalize them. Sunday February 27, 13:30-16:00; Nagoya
International Centre 3F, Room 2; one-day members 1000
yen (please note the change).
Niigata—Making Friends in English: from “Hello” to“See you later” by Jill Robbins, Kwansei Gakuin
University. How do learners get beyond that first“Hello”? We all know the first conversation is crucial
to develop a friendship. For L2 learners, first conversations with native speakers are often fraught withfear. This presentation shows how Japanese learners
develop strategies needed for such conversations
and making English-speaking friends. Sunday February 13, 10:30-12:30; Niigata International FriendshipCenter 2F; one-day members 1000 yen, students 500 yen.
Omiya—In a Land Far Away... by Bonnie Yoneda,
Osaka Shoin Women’s College. Despite their obvious simplicity, fairy tales are enjoyed by old andyoung alike, the world over. They are popular because they can tell us something about ourselves;
they teach us to think carefully before acting, butreassure us that if we make the wrong choice, all is52

not lost. We can learn much about our culture, ourlanguage, ourselves. Sunday February 20, 14:00-17:00;
Omiya Jack (near JR Omiya station); one-day members
1000 yen.
民話やおとぎ話は話は単純ではあるが、老いも若きも楽しめる。それぞれの話にはその独自の言語、文化及び人間への深い洞察を含み我々の人生の支えにもなっている。楽しみながら民話、おとぎ話の世界を探求する。

Tokushima—Increasing Involvement and Motivationin the EFL Classroom by Richard Walker, Longman
ELT, Pearson Education Japan. Through a variety ofactivities and techniques, the aim of this workshop
will be to show that it is possible to motivate and teachcommunicatively, even in large classes. Ideas will betaken from new materials developed for students inJapan, appropriate for high school students throughto adults. Sunday February 27, 13:30-15:30; Tokushima
Chuokominkan; free for all.
このワークショップでは、大人数クラスでも生徒ひとりひとりがやる気をもって積極的に参加出来るコミュニカティブなクラス
創りを、様々なアクティビティを通してご覧にいれます。日本の高校生から成人学習者向けに開発された新しいテキストを使って効果的なアイデアとテクニックをご紹介します。

Tokyo—The Art of Storytelling by Steven Morgan,
Keio University and others. Storytelling is a greatly
valued art in many cultures, and English-speaking
cultures are no exception. A significant amount ofgeneral daily conversation relies on recalling anddescribing events, actions and interactions, in shorttelling stories. This workshop explores a variety ofstorytelling activities that can be used to spark theimagination of students in reading, writing, or conversation classes. Tuesday March 28, 18:30-21:00;
Sophia University (Yotsuya Stn), Room 9-252.
Yamagata—(1) Invisible Properties of Videotaped
Movies: What’s Good for EFL Students by Yamaguchi
Tsuneo, Yamagata University. In this presentation,
linguistic as well as nonlinguistic features of movies
in English learning will be shown and then a discussion for cross cultural awareness shall be shared
between the speaker and participants.
(2) Teaching Math Through English by Guy Dubeand Shannon Dube, Yamagata Prefectural Board of
Education. This workshop, specifically geared for theelementary school level, will try to give new, easy,
and interesting activities for teaching math in English. (1) Sunday February 13, 13:30-16:00. (2) Sunday
February 27, 13:30-16:00; (both) Yamagata KajoKominkan; one-day member 700 yen.

Chapter Contacts
People wishing to get in touch with chapters for information
can use the following list of contacts. Chapters wishing to
make alterations to their listed contact person should send all
information to the editor: Tom Merner; t/f: 045-822-6623;
tmt@nn.iij4u.or.jp.

The Language Teacher 24:2

Chapter Contacts/Conference Calendar
Akita—Suzuki Takeshi; t: 0184-22-1562;
takeshis@mail.edinet.ne.jp
Chiba—Bradley Moore; bmoore@jiu.ac.jp
Fukui—Maurice L. Splichal; t/f: 0776-66-6833;
maurice@fukui-nct.ac.jp
Fukuoka—Kevin O’Leary; t: 0942-32-0101; f: 0942-222221; oleary@oleary.net; http://kyushu.com/jalt/
events.html
Gifu—Paul Doyon; t: 058-329-1328, f: 058-326-2607;
doyon@alice.asahi-u.ac.jp
Gunma—Wayne Pennington; t/f: 027-283-8984;
jk1w-pgtn@asahi-net.or.jp
Hamamatsu—Brendan Lyons; t/f: 053-454-4649;
bren@gol.com
Himeji—William Balsamo; t: 0792-54-5711;
balsamo@kenmei.ac.jp
Hiroshima—Joy Jarman-Walsh; t:082-878-9931;
jjarman@pent.yasuda-u.ac.jp
Hokkaido—Ken Hartmann; t/f: 011-584-7588; rm6khtmn@asahi-net.or.jp; http://www2.crosswinds.net/~hyrejalthokkaido/JALTPage/
Ibaraki—Neil Dunn; t: 029-254-6230;
ndunn@call09.hum.ibaraki.ac.jp
Iwate—Suzuki Izumi; t/f: 0196-35-6416;
mfp@nnettown.or.jp
Kagawa—Alex MacGregor; t/f: 087 851-3902;
canstay@niji.or.jp
Kagoshima—Sophia Shang; t: 0995-43-1111; f: 099543-1114; shang@kwc-u.ac.jp
Kanazawa—Bill Holden; t: 076-229-6140(w) 2295608(h); holden@nsknet.or.jp; http://www.jaist.ac.jp/~mark/jalt.html
Kitakyushu—Chris Carman; t: 093-603-1611(w) 5922883(h); carman@med.uoeh-u.ac.jp; website http://
www.seafolk.ne.jp/kqjalt/
Kobe—Brent Jones; t/f: 0797-31-2068; bjones@gol.com
Kumamoto (Affiliate Chapter)—Andrew Shaffer;
t: 096-339-1952; andmirs@try-net.or.jp
Kyoto—Ishikawa Katsumi; t: 075-581-3422; f: 5936988; vivid@mbox.kyoto-inet.or.jp
Matsuyama—Robert Oettel; t: 089-941-4136; f: 089931-4973; oettel@shinonome.ac.jp
Miyazaki—Mike Guest; t: 0985-85-5369;
michael@post1.miyazaki-med.ac.jp
Nagasaki—Tim Allan; t/f: 095-824-6580;
allan@kwassui.ac.jp; Sarah Apedaile; t/f: 095-8441024; sarah@bronze.ocn.ne.jp
Nagoya—Claire Gelder; t: 052-781-0165; f: 052-7814334
Nara—Larry Chin; t: 0745-73-5377; f: 0745-73-2453;
lschin@gol.com
Niigata—Robin Nagano; t/f: 0258-47-9810;
robin@vos.nagaokaut.ac.jp
Okayama—Peter Burden; t/f: 086-293-3545;
burden-p@osu.ac.jp
Okinawa—John Dickson; t/f: 098-893-7557;
dickson@southernx.ne.jp
Omiya—Okada Chikahiko; t/f: 047-377-4695;
chikarie@orange.plala.or.jp; Mary Grove; t: 048-6445400; grove@tuj.ac.jp
Osaka—Nakamura Kimiko; t/f: 06-376-3741;
kimiko@sun-inet.or.jp
February 2000

Sendai—John Wiltshier; t: 0225-88-3832;
BXU01356@niftyserve.or.jp
Shizuoka—Dean Williams; t: 0543-66-1459;
deanw@iris.dti.ne.jp
Shinshu—Mary Aruga; t: 0266-27-3894;
mmaruga@aol.com
Tochigi—Jim Chambers; t/f: 028-627-1858;
JiMiCham@aol.com
Tokushima—Nora McKenna; t: 0886-41-4980(h);0886-65-1300 ext. 2375(w); f: 0886-65-8037;
nora@shikoku-u.ac.jp
Tokyo—Beth Kerrison; jalt_tokyo@hotmail.com;
Suzuki Takako; t/f: 0424-61-1460
Toyohashi—Laura Kusaka; t: 0532-88-2658;
kusaka@vega.aichi-u.ac.jp
West Tokyo—Kobayashi Etsuo; t: 042-366-2947;
kobayasi@rikkyo.ac.jp; http://home.att.ne.jp/gold/db/
wtcal.hmtl
Yamagata—Sugawara Fumio; t/f: 0238-85-2468
Yamaguchi—Shima Yukiko; t: 0836-88-5421;
yuki@cu.yama.sut.ac.jp
Yokohama—Ron Thornton; t/f: 0467-31-2797;
thornton@fin.ne.jp

Conference Calendar
edited by lynne roecklein and kakutani tomoko
We welcome new listings. Please submit information in
Japanese or English to the respective editor by the 15th of themonth, at least three months ahead (four months for overseas conferences). Thus, February 15th is the deadline for a
May conference in Japan or a June conference overseas,
especially when the conference is early in the month.

Upcoming Conferences
March 30-April 1, 2000—The Bilingual* (i.e. *=Multilingual) Brain: The Biannual GASLA (Generative
Approaches to Second Language Acquisition) Conference sponsored by The Center for Bilingual andBicultural Studies (CBBS) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and by Boston College, will beheld at University Park Hotel at MIT in Cambridge,
USA. This conference aims to bring together the twocomplementary domains of cognitive and linguistic
research on language structure and behavior andneuropsychological research on language correlates
in the brain. Topics of special interest to EFL include
the bilingual* brain versus monolingual brain, connections between second language acquisition (SLA)or bilingual* acquisition data and brain correlates,
and the role of experience in brain correlates, language data, etc. More information at http://
web.mit.edu/fll/www/news/Conf.html, or contact
Suzanne Flynn; Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Foreign Languages & Literatures, 77 Massachu53

Conference Calendar
setts Ave, Room 14N-303, Cambridge, MA 02139,
USA; t: 1-617-253-7821; f: 1-617-258-6189.
June 15-18, 2000—People, Languages and Culturesin the Third Millennium the third international
FEELTA (Far Eastern Language Teachers Association) conference will be held at the Far Eastern State
University in Vladivostok, Russia. ELT professionals
teaching at all levels welcome. Topic areas: English
in the Pacific Rim countries, Intercultural Communication, Teacher Training and Teacher Development, Technology in Education, Materials Writing,
Teaching about English-Speaking Countries. Contact Stephen Ryan at RX1S-RYAN@asahi-net.or.jp or
f: 0726-24-2793 for both conference and practicalinformation. Stephen, who has attended FEELTA’s
interesting, friendly conferences before, is putting
together a group of teachers from Japan interested inattending this year’s conference. Contact him soon.
It is essential to begin planning early.

Calls for Papers/Posters(in order of deadlines)
February 29, 2000 (for September 22-24, 2000)—
Insolico’ 2000: Seventh International Sociolinguistic
Conference organized by the International
Sociolinguistic Society in Sofia (INSOLISO) and heldin Sofia, Bulgaria. This year’s special topic is “Bilingualism and Diglossia: Actualized,” with areas ofparticular interest including Bilingualism as Socialand Psychological Phenomenon and Diglossia in
Various Language Situations. Send one-page abstracts,
including full address, by email or snail mail to
Emanuil Kostov (emanuil@slav.uni-sofia.bg OR
emanuil@mailcity.com); St Kliment Ochridski University of Sofia, Faculty of Slavic Philologies, BG1504 Sofia, Bulgaria; f: 359-2-9460255.
March 31, 2000 (for September 4-6, 2000)—Languagein the mind? Implications for Research and Education a conference organized by the Department ofEnglish Language and Literature, National University of Singapore and to be held in Singapore, on
issues related to the role of the mind in the learningand use of language such as the extent to which
language is an innate mental process as opposed toa social construction. Papers are especially welcome
on mental processes involved in the acquisition of
language, in the reception and production of language, and in the mental activities of social interaction. Keynote speakers include Jean Aitchison(University of Oxford) and Rod Ellis (University of
Auckland). Proposals for parallel paper presentations, symposiums and workshops are invited fromacademic researchers, teacher educators, and teachers in schools. See the conference website at http://
www.fas.nus.edu.sg/ell/langmind/index.htm for a
full list of desired sub-themes, etc. Send proposals
and abstracts to: Conference Secretary, Language in54

the Mind; Department of English Language andLiterature, FASS, 7 Arts Link Block AS5, National
University of Singapore, Singapore 117570, Republicof Singapore; or email to: ellconlk@nus.edu.sg.
March 31, 2000 (for September 7-9, 2000)—Language
Across Boundaries: 33rd Annual Meeting of the
British Association for Applied Linguistics (BAAL),
on the campus of Homerton College in Cambridge,
UK, will be organized to investigate boundaries
crossed by language in respect particularly to cultures, disciplines, language learning, and modes.
The keynote speakers are John Sinclair, Jennifer
Coates, David Graddol, and Bencie Woll. Proposals
for papers, workshops, colloquia, discussions, andposters (later deadline of May 31) are invited on any
aspect of applied linguistics, but especially thoseaddressing the conference sub-themes. Details about
abstracts and submissions available at http://
www.BAAL.org.uk/baalr.htm, or write to BAAL 2000;
c/o Dovetail Management Consultancy, 4 Tintagel
Crescent, London SE22 8HT, UK; Andy.Cawdell@BAAL.org.uk.

Reminders—calls for papers
February 17, 2000 (extended) (for June 9-12, 2000)—
JALTCALL 2000: Directions and Debates at the
New Millennium the annual national conference of
the Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL)
SIG, will be held at Tokyo University of Technology.
See jaltcall.org/conferences/call2000/ for more details in both English and Japanese, or contact Ali
Campbell; School of Media Science, Tokyo University of Technology, 1404 Katakura, Hachioji, Tokyo
192-8580; t: 0426-37-2594; f: 0456-37-2594; campbell@media.teu.ac.jp.
February 29, 2000 (for May 20-21, 2000)—CUE Miniconference—Content and Foreign Language Education: Looking at the Future at Keisen University,
Tama Center, Tokyo. Extensive details and online
proposal submission at wild-e.org/cue/conferences/
content.html, or contact CUE Program Chair Eamon
McCafferty; eamon@gol.com.

Reminders—conferences
March 11-14, 2000—AAAL 2000 Annual Convention: Crossing Boundaries at the Hotel Vancouver,
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. See aaal.org/
pages/Vancouver.html for details. Otherwise, contact Patricia L. Carrell, Program Chair; Department
of Applied Linguistics/ ESL, Georgia State University,
PO Box 4099; Atlanta, GA 30302-4099, USA; t: 404651-0255; pcarrell@gsu.edu.
March 14-18, 2000—TESOL 2000: Navigating the
New Millennium—The 34th Annual Convention
and Exposition at the Vancouver Convention and

The Language Teacher 24:2

Conference Calendar/JIC
Exhibition Centre, Vancouver, Canada. See
www.tesol.edu/conv/t2000.html or contact TESOL,
Convention Department; 700 South Washington
Street, Suite 200; Alexandria, Virginia 22314, USA; t:
1-703-836-0774; f: 1-703-836-7864; conv@tesol.edu.
March 27-30, 2000—’Ten Years After’ Cognitive Linguistics: Second Language Acquisition, Language
Pedagogy, and Linguistic Theory—the 28th LAUDSYMPOSIUM at the University of Koblenz-Landau
in Germany. Contact: Martin Puetz; Institut fur
Anglistik, Im Fort 7, University of Koblenz-Landau,
76829 Landau, Germany; t: 49-6341-280-1762; f: 496341-280-376; puetz@uni-landau.de.
March 27-31, 2000—IATEFL Conference 2000: the34th International Annual IATEFLConference in
Dublin, Ireland. Dublin and accommodation info
available at www.iatefl.org/Dublin-2000.htm. Mailcontact: IATEFL, 3 Kingsdown Chambers,
Whitstable, CT5 2FL, UK; t: 44-0-1227-276528;
IATEFL@compuserve.com/.

Job Information Center/
Positionsedited by bettina begole
To list a position in The Language Teacher, please fax oremail Bettina Begole, Job Information Center, atbegole@po.harenet.ne.jp or call 0857-87-0858. Pleaseemail rather than fax, if possible. The notice should bereceived before the 15th of the month, two months
before publication, and contain the following information: city and prefecture, name of institution, titleof position, whether full- or part-time, qualifications,duties, salary and benefits, application materials, deadline, and contact information. A special form is notnecessary.
We at the JIC do our best to conform to JALT’s policy
on discrimination. We screen ads for discriminatory
wording, and confirm whether ’preference’ actuallymeans a preference for a certain sort of person, or is infact a requirement. That said, I would like to remind all
potential applicants that we can’t screen for what isn’tsaid. If, in reading between the lines in an ad, you havesome questions, please contact the employer directly
concerning employment policies. This month we received an ad, which is not included in this column,that specified an age range between 25 and 35, andspecified the nationality required. These sorts of requirements are not at all uncommon here in Japan,
and unfortunately it seems that the better and moreprestigious the job, the narrower the range of acceptable applicants. If you are interested in applying for a
February 2000

position requiring a great deal of preparation (copies
of publications, videotape, etc.) it may be to youradvantage to contact the employer before submitting
your application.
If you, as a JALT member, associate member, oradvertiser, have any comments on JALT’s policy on
discrimination in the workplace, especially as it relates
to job ads placed with the JIC, please feel free to send
your thoughts to either the JIC, or even better, to yourelected officers in JALT.
Iwate-ken—Mizusawa School of English in Mizusawa
is seeking a full-time English teacher. Qualifications: At least two years experience teaching English
in Japan and able to speak Japanese. Duties: TeachEnglish conversation to all ages, testing, student
report cards, general upkeep of school. Salary &Benefits: 270,000 yen/month. Contact: Lois Mine;
Mizusawa School of English, 1-2-3 Tainichidori,
Mizusawa-shi, Iwate 023-0827; t/f: 0197-25-8860.
Kitakyushu—Kyushu Institute of Technology, a Japanese national university in Kitakyushu, is seeking
qualified applicants for professor, assistant professor, or associate professor of EFL to begin October 1,
2000. Qualifications: PhD or its equivalent in published achievements in TEFL, applied linguistics,
linguistics, or related fields (including literature,comparative culture, area studies, etc.); proof ofcontribution at learned conferences. Japanese language ability is preferred. Duties: One graduate-levelclass and five undergraduate classes per week; management, coordination, and participation in departmental activities. Salary & Benefits: Salary is basedon the Japanese Ministry of Education scale. Benefits
include annual bonuses, once-only transportationfrom point of origin, conference travel allowance,and research budget. Health insurance covers medical and dental care. A teacher’s apartment may beavailable. Application Materials: Resume with arecent passport-size photo, photocopies of all degrees and diplomas, most recent academic record,
medical certificate, verification of past employment,
at least one letter of recommendation, a list of
publications with 100-word summaries for eachpublication, and copies of all important publications. Deadline: February 28, 2000. Contact:
Masatoshi Tabuki, Professor of Linguistics; Department of Human Sciences, Faculty of Engineering,
Kyushu Institute of Technology, 1-1 Sensui-cho,Tobata-ku, Kitakyushu 804-8550; t/f: 093-883-3441(Japanese), 093-883-3446 (English); tabuki@dhs.
kyutech.ac.jp (Japanese), ruxton@dhs.kyutech.ac.jp(English).
Osaka-fu—SIO Japan is seeking part- and full-time
English instructors to work in central and northern
Osaka. Qualifications: Some Japanese ability andcomputer skills; a degree is valuable but not mandatory. Salary & Benefits: Stock options included.
55

JIC
Contact: Robert Pretty; SIO Japan; t: 0120-528310;
siojapan@poporo.ne.jp.
Shiga-ken—The University of Shiga in Hikone-shi isseeking a part-time English teacher for first-year university students to begin April 2000. The campus islocated about one hour on local train from Kyoto, and10 minutes by bus. Qualifications: MA and college
teaching experience. Duties: Teach two koma on
Tuesday mornings (8:50-12:00) and/or two koma on
Thursday mornings (8:50-12:00). Salary & Benefits:
8,000-12,000 yen per koma, depending on qualifications; transportation fee. Application Materials: Resume. Contact: Walter Klinger; University of Shiga
Prefecture, 2500 Hassaka-cho, Hikone-shi 522-8533; t:0749-28-8267; f: 0749-28-8480; wklinger@ice.usp.
ac.jp; www2.ice.usp.ac.jp/wklinger/.
Tokyo—The English Department of Aoyama Gakuin
University is seeking part-time teachers for conversation and writing courses at their Atsugi campus. The
campus is about 90 minutes from Shinjuku stationon the Odakyu line, and classes are on Tuesdays,
Thursdays, and Fridays. Qualifications: Resident inJapan, with an MA in TEFL/TESOL, English literature, applied linguistics, or communications; minimum three years of experience teaching English at auniversity, or a PhD and one year university teachingexperience. Publications, experience in presentations, and familiarity with email are assets. Duties:
Classroom duties include teaching small group discussion, journal writing, and book reports. The university is interested in teachers who can collaborate
with others in a curriculum revision project requiring lunchtime meetings and an orientation in April.
Salary: Comparable to other universities in the Tokyo area. Application Materials: Request in writing,with a self-addressed envelope, an application form
and information about the program. Deadline:
Ongoing. Contact: “PART-TIMERS,” English andAmerican Literature Department, Aoyama Gakuin
University, 4-4-25 Shibuya, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo 1508366. Short-listed candidates will be contacted forinterviews.
Wakayama-ken—English Village International K.K.
in Tanabe is looking for a full- or part-time English
teacher to begin immediately. Qualifications: Teaching experience preferable but not necessary. Duties:
Teach mostly children at a growing school. Salary &Benefits: Visa sponsorship possible. Application
Materials and Contact: Fax cover letter and resume
to English Village International at 0739-26-0710,
attention Kathy Sekioka.

Web Corner
You can receive the updated JIC job listings on the 20thof each month by email at begole@po.harenet.ne.jp.
Here are a variety of sites with information relevant
to teaching in Japan:
56

EFL, ESL and Other Teaching Jobs in Japan atwww.jobsinjapan.com/want-ads.htm
Information for those seeking university positions(not a job list) at www.voicenet.co.jp/~davald/
univquestions.html
ELT News at www.eltnews.com/jobsinjapan.shtml
JALT Online homepage at www.jalt.org
Jobs and Career Enhancement links at www.jalt.org/
jalt_e/main/careers.html
Teaching English in Japan: A Guide to Getting a Job atwww.wizweb.com/~susan/mainpage.html
ESL Café’s Job Center at www.pacificnet.net/~sperling/
jobcenter.html
Ohayo Sensei at www.wco.com/~ohayo/
NACSIS (National Center for Science Information Systems’ Japanese site) career information at
nacwww.nacsis.ac.jp/
The Digital Education Information Network Job Centre at www.go-ed.com/jobs/iatefl
EFL in Asia at www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Flats/7947/
eflasia.htm
Jobs in Japan at www.englishresource.com
Job information at www.ESLworldwide.com
差別に関する
The Language Teacher
Job Information Center の方針
私たちは、日本国の法規、国際法、一般的良識に従い、差別用語と雇用差別に反対します。JIC/Positions コラムの求人広告は、原則として、性別、年令、人種、宗教、出身国による条件は掲載しません。（例えば、イギリス人、アメリカ人というよりは、ネイティブ
並の語学力という表現をお使いください。) これらの条件が法的に要求されているなど、やむをえない理由のある場合は、下記の用紙の「その他の条件」の欄に、その理由とともにお書きください。編集者は、この方針にそぐわない求人広告を編集したり、書き直しをお願いしたりする権利を留保します。

TLT/Job Information Center
Policy on Discrimination
We oppose discriminatory language, policies, and employment practices, in accordance with Japanese law, international law, and human good sense. Announcements in the
JIC/Positions column should not contain exclusions or
requirements concerning gender, age, race, religion, or
country of origin (“native speaker competency,” rather
than “British” or “American”), unless there are legal requirements or other compelling reasons for such discrimination, in which case those reasons should be clearly
explained in the job announcement. The editors reserve
the right to edit ads for clarity and to return ads forrewriting if they do not comply with this policy.
We encourage employers in all areas of language education to use this free service in order to reach the widestgroup of qualified, caring professionals. Nonpublic personnel searches and/or discriminatory limitations reduce the number of qualified applicants, and are thus
counterproductive to locating the best qualified person
for a position.
The Language Teacher 24:2